JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, June 15, 2025

TTCB behind by 15 audits that represents $29M from CWI funding

by

JOSHUA SEEMUNGAL
27 days ago
20250518

Over the last four years, be­tween 2021 and 2024, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) re­ceived more than TT$29 mil­lion (US$4.4 mil­lion) in fund­ing from Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) for op­er­at­ing, tour and tour­na­ment ex­pens­es. Ac­cord­ing to Crick­et West In­dies’ an­nu­al au­dit state­ments, viewed by Guardian Me­dia, the TTCB’s al­lo­ca­tions from CWI in­creased by 69 per cent be­tween 2022 and 2024.”

The lo­cal board re­ceived $11.5 mil­lion in 2024, $9.5 mil­lion in 2023, $6.8 mil­lion in 2022 and an­oth­er $1.8 mil­lion in 2021.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions dis­cov­ered that the TTCB has over fif­teen au­dits out­stand­ing for the CWI.

Ac­cord­ing to TTCB sources, the bud­gets sub­mit­ted for the out­stand­ing au­dits are worth around $20 mil­lion.

Four post-event au­dits are out­stand­ing for 2022, four for 2023 and an­oth­er sev­en from 2023 on­wards.

The TTCB was giv­en $11.2 mil­lion for tour and tour­na­ment ex­pens­es in 2022 and 2023.

In a 2023 email ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia Sports, Lu­cia Molyneaux, the Sec­re­tary of Crick­et West In­dies’ Au­dit, Risk and Com­pli­ance De­part­ment, wrote to five TTCB board mem­bers.

One of the re­cip­i­ents was TTCB Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath. Bas­sarath is al­so a CWI vice pres­i­dent.

CWI au­dit con­cerns and re­spons­es

“Good day TTCB,

I trust this email finds you well.

As it re­lates to the email trail be­low, we have not had any progress on the mat­ter of per­form­ing the post-event au­dits. We would be grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with the TTCB to dis­cuss your con­cerns.

“It is note­wor­thy that in ad­di­tion to the four pend­ing au­dits from 2022, we have four au­dits pend­ing as fol­lows:

CG Su­per 50, West In­dies Cham­pi­onships Round III to IV, West In­dies vs In­dia … and U-17 Re­gion­al Camp & Tour­na­ment.

We look for­ward to hear­ing from you soon.” Molyneux wrote.

In re­sponse, for­mer TTCB Trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo wrote that the board will dis­cuss the post-event au­dits at an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to TTCB sources, Chaitoo in­tend­ed to com­plete the au­dits be­fore be­ing re­moved by the board. The for­mer trea­sur­er de­clined com­ment when ap­proached by Guardian Me­dia Sports for a re­sponse.

“The Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Board is copied on this email thread, as he has over­sight re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Sec­re­tari­at and al­so the two TTCB Di­rec­tors to CWI,” Chaitoo wrote in an email re­sponse to the CWI.

De­spite hav­ing au­dits out­stand­ing, the TTCB re­ceived an­oth­er $9.3 mil­lion for tour and tour­na­ment spend­ing in 2024.

Guardian Me­dia wrote to CWI Pres­i­dent Dr. Kishore Shal­low, CWI CEO Chris Dehring, the CWI Com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment and TTCB Pres­i­dent Bas­sarath seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the TTCB’s com­pli­ance with CWI’s fi­nan­cial pro­to­cols.

First­ly, Guardian Me­dia Sports asked whether the TTCB sub­mit­ted all re­quired au­dits to CWI for the pe­ri­od 2022 to present.

We al­so asked if the TTCB re­ceived the re­main­ing 25 per cent of fund­ing from CWI bud­gets due af­ter the com­ple­tion of post-event au­dits.

In re­sponse, CWI CEO Dehring said that he was not in a po­si­tion to speak to spe­cif­ic dis­burse­ments or au­dit sub­mis­sions at this time.

“I can con­firm that CWI con­tin­ues to en­gage with all ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards to en­sure full com­pli­ance with its fi­nan­cial poli­cies. Where there are de­lays or dis­crep­an­cies, ap­pro­pri­ate fol­low-ups are un­der­tak­en through the rel­e­vant in­ter­nal com­mit­tees. As you would ap­pre­ci­ate, cer­tain fi­nan­cial de­tails may be sub­ject to on­go­ing re­view, and it would be pre­ma­ture to com­ment on the specifics you’ve raised ahead of the com­ple­tion of those process­es.

“Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) re­mains com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and good gov­er­nance across all its mem­ber boards, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB). Mat­ters re­lat­ing to fi­nan­cial re­port­ing and dis­burse­ment of funds are re­viewed through our in­ter­nal mech­a­nisms in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished pro­to­cols where ju­ris­dic­tion is es­tab­lished. How­ev­er, it is im­por­tant to note Crick­et West In­dies does not over­see the op­er­a­tions of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards, as they func­tion in­de­pen­dent­ly,” Dehring wrote.

Re­gion­al sources: Sys­tem can be ex­ploit­ed

Ac­cord­ing to re­gion­al crick­et sources, in­clud­ing TTCB sources, the event fund­ing process used by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) can be ex­ploit­ed.

The Fi­nances and Bud­gets sec­tion of the Crick­et West In­dies’ con­sti­tu­tion states that the CWI and the agent (mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion) shall agree on an event bud­get, with the CWI re­spon­si­ble for the agreed costs of host­ing and stag­ing the event.

“Un­less oth­er­wise agreed be­tween CWI and the Agent, the Event Bud­get shall be paid to the Agent in the agreed cur­ren­cy, in ac­cor­dance with the fol­low­ing pay­ment sched­ule:

• Four weeks be­fore the start of the event—50 per cent

• Two weeks af­ter the last match—25 per cent;

• Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the Ac­tu­al Cost Re­port and post-event au­dit, the out­stand­ing bal­ance of 25 per cent.

“The agent shall man­age all cost ex­pen­di­ture from the event bud­get, in ac­cor­dance with pru­dent best prac­tice. The Agent ac­knowl­edges and agrees that any un­der­spend shall be for the ben­e­fit of CWI and shall be the prod­uct of ef­fi­cient cost man­age­ment alone and shall not be achieved to the detri­ment of the qual­i­ty of the event… Any cost sav­ing achieved by the Agent in re­spect of any bud­get item shall not be ap­plied to any oth­er bud­get item un­less ap­proved in writ­ing by CWI,” the CWI con­sti­tu­tion stat­ed.

Re­gion­al crick­et sources said that, in the­o­ry, an agent can ex­ag­ger­ate an event bud­get by up to 200 per cent be­cause it is not ex­ceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for an agent to jus­ti­fy its ini­tial bud­get re­quest.

In re­ceiv­ing 75 per cent of the agreed fund­ing from CWI (at an in­flat­ed bud­get), they can cre­ate ex­cess fund­ing and for­go the re­main­ing 25 per cent that is on­ly sup­posed to be grant­ed af­ter an ac­tu­al cost re­port and an event au­dit.

Ac­cord­ing to the CWI 2024 au­dit, the re­gion­al body owed the TTCB $6.7 mil­lion in 2024. It was $13.5 mil­lion in 2023.

The sources said it is al­so pos­si­ble for par­ties to seek fund­ing from mul­ti­ple or­gan­i­sa­tions (CWI or the gov­ern­ment, for ex­am­ple) for the same event and cause. They called it “dou­ble or triple-dip­ping”.

On Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia Sports’ In­ves­tiga­tive Desk re­port­ed that, be­tween 2019 and 2024, the TTCB re­ceived more than $30 mil­lion in tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey through the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Sport & Cul­ture Fund and the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to con­cerned TTCB sources, the board has not been asked to ac­count for its spend­ing.

On May 8, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (SIU) raid­ed the Cou­va of­fices of the TTCB.

In a sub­se­quent press re­lease, po­lice said they re­cov­ered key doc­u­ments to an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In late 2023, whistle­blow­er and for­mer TTCB Trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo re­port­ed to po­lice that up to $500,000 or more was miss­ing/un­ac­count­ed for from the TTCB’s fi­nan­cial ac­counts, ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of an au­dit.

A fe­male staff mem­ber wrote a res­ig­na­tion let­ter ad­mit­ting to al­leged mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds. In the let­ter, she claimed that the amount could be be­tween $200,000 and $300,000.

TTCB’s no con­fi­dence against Chaitoo

Chaitoo was then re­moved in a suc­cess­ful no-con­fi­dence mo­tion passed by 35 votes for and 12 votes against.

The mo­tion came af­ter some TTCB mem­bers be­lieved Chaitoo act­ed in a man­ner that un­der­mined the board.

Sev­er­al cor­po­rate spon­sors paused or with­drew sup­port from TTCB com­pe­ti­tions be­cause of Chaitoo’s al­le­ga­tions.

The last ex­ter­nal, in­de­pen­dent au­dit the TTCB un­der­went was car­ried out by Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers in 2018.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion “Project Barcelona” ex­am­ined al­le­ga­tions of pro­cure­ment, con­tract­ing and ex­pen­di­ture ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

Mean­while, an NGC au­dit found that the spon­sor­ship funds were trans­ferred by the TTCB with­out ap­proval.

The re­port al­so dis­cov­ered that false in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed by the TTCB in its fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2014 and 2015, in­clud­ing du­pli­cate re­port­ing of funds.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment over the last week­end, TTCB Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath said, in the af­ter­math of the po­lice raid, he sees no rea­son for him­self or any mem­ber of staff to re­sign.

Bas­sarath de­nied be­ing in­ter­viewed in con­nec­tion with the on­go­ing fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored