JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Over the last six years, be­tween 2019 and 2024, the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) re­ceived more than $30 mil­lion in tax­pay­er’s mon­ey through the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Sport & Cul­ture Fund (OPM­SCF), and the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT), ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to con­cerned TTCB sources, the board has not been asked to ac­count for its spend­ing ful­ly.

Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act Re­quest doc­u­ments, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, re­vealed that the TTCB re­ceived $2.8 mil­lion be­tween 2019 and 2022 from the OPM­SCF. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, sev­en crick­et zones re­ceived a cu­mu­la­tive $2.9 mil­lion in di­rect fund­ing from the OPM­SCF dur­ing those four years.

Ac­cord­ing to TTCB sources, the OPM­SCF pro­vid­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly an­oth­er $1.8 mil­lion in fund­ing to the TTCB over 2023 and 2024.

Ac­cord­ing to a 2022 fi­nan­cial au­dit of SporTT, the or­gan­i­sa­tion pro­vid­ed $19.8 mil­lion in fund­ing to the ma­jor na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions in 2022. Crick­et re­ceived 47% of the fund­ing, $9.3 mil­lion.

In 2021, crick­et re­ceived $570,000.

The TTCB, ac­cord­ing to the au­dit, col­lect­ed an­oth­er $1.9 mil­lion in SporTT fund­ing in 2019 and 2020, and ac­cord­ing to TTCB sources, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $6 mil­lion over 2023 and 2024.

In May 2024, the Min­istry of Sport gave the TTCB an­oth­er $7.9 mil­lion in fund­ing, as part of $16 mil­lion dis­trib­uted to ten na­tion­al sport­ing bod­ies.

Three years be­fore that, be­tween 2014 and 2016, state-owned agency the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny spon­sored an­oth­er $13.3 mil­lion.

Yet, de­spite re­ceiv­ing more than $43 mil­lion in state fund­ing be­tween 2014 and 2022, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the TTCB is not over­seen by ei­ther the Sport Min­istry or the Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), and, there­fore, does not reg­u­lar­ly un­der­go in­de­pen­dent au­dits.

The board’s last three in­de­pen­dent au­dits - by Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC), Shell and NGC (Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny) - were com­mis­sioned at the re­quest of con­cerned spon­sors be­fore 2018. The re­ports found al­leged mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of spon­sor­ship funds by the TTCB.

Ac­cord­ing to con­cerned TTCB sources, while the board au­dits and signs off ac­counts an­nu­al­ly, the in­ter­nal­ly au­dit­ed ac­counts are in­ca­pable of flag­ging al­leged fraud be­cause the cheques are signed by a sig­na­to­ry.

A cheque sig­na­to­ry is an in­di­vid­ual au­tho­rised to sign cheques on be­half of busi­ness­es and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“Au­dit­ed ac­counts will be sent to any one of the spon­sors, but that is pro­to­col. It does not speak to al­leged wrong­do­ing.

“To clean this up, there has to be a foren­sic au­dit re­quest­ed by SporTT and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. There have been a lot of ex­cess funds, yet the board is still re­quest­ing fund­ing,” a board source said.

Ac­cord­ing to a for­mer T&T and West In­dies crick­eter, who with­held his iden­ti­ty, the TTCB is al­lowed to do what it wants.

“They can do what­ev­er the hell they want to do, with­out any re­al ac­count­abil­i­ty. How are all the in­ter­nal au­dits bal­anc­ing, but mon­ey is miss­ing? Why is that? How come every in­de­pen­dent au­dit: Shell, NGC & PWC have picked up mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of fund­ing?

“They don’t re­port to any­one per se, but they get state fund­ing. They are re­quired to re­port how these monies are spent. For ex­am­ple, in Guyana, the Guyanese Crick­et Board has to lay out its fi­nan­cials and be ques­tioned. They (The T&T gov­ern­ment) have to amend the act in par­lia­ment. It is out­dat­ed. It has been there for the longest while,” he said.

The TTCB was in­cor­po­rat­ed un­der the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board of Con­trol Act (In­cor­po­ra­tion) Act of 1989.

TTCB’s mem­ber­ship com­pris­es 49 vot­ing mem­bers and a max­i­mum of 46 non-vot­ing mem­bers.

In 2024, for­mer in­de­pen­dent board mem­ber Za­heer Ali, an at­tor­ney, called for a Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in­to the TTCB In­cor­po­ra­tion Act 1989, sug­gest­ing the TTCB was es­sen­tial­ly a law un­to it­self.

<Don’t look at us: CWI, Sports Min­istry dis­tance them­selves>

Nei­ther CWI nor the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs claimed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for over­see­ing the TTCB’s op­er­a­tions.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment on the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s raid of the TTCB’s of­fices last week, CWI’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Chris Dehring said the TTCB is an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion and a share­hold­er of CWI.

“Crick­et West In­dies does not over­see the op­er­a­tions of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al crick­et boards, as they func­tion in­de­pen­dent­ly. We, there­fore, are un­able to com­ment on in­ter­nal mat­ters of ter­ri­to­r­i­al crick­et boards,” Dehring said in a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia.

Mean­while, Sports and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Phillip Watts said the Min­istry is not re­spon­si­ble for over­see­ing the TTCB, as it is an arm of CWI.

“I wouldn’t want to com­ment on that (the TTPS raid). That is a po­lice mat­ter. What I can tell you is that it is an on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and the po­lice need to do what they need to do. That was an on­go­ing mat­ter that was raised some years ago with some cheques and an em­ploy­ee.

“The TTCB is an arm of the West In­dies Crick­et Board. What hap­pens is that the Min­istry of Sport would give fund­ing to the TTCB through SPORTT, like any oth­er sport­ing body in Trinidad, you would ap­ply through SPORTT,” he said.

<Last in­de­pen­dent Au­dit was in 2018>

The last in­de­pen­dent au­dit the TTCB un­der­went was a 2018 foren­sic au­dit car­ried out by PwC.

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

The TTCB and its pres­i­dent, Az­im Bas­sarath, were men­tioned in the re­port.

It found that TTCB and SporTT rep­re­sen­ta­tives seemed to be at­tempt­ing to in­flu­ence fund­ing.

An NGC au­dit in­to a spon­sor­ship arrange­ment found that the funds were trans­ferred by the TTCB with­out ap­proval.

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

In 2020, High Court Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the NGC Au­dit Re­port of the TTCB.

In 2023, for­mer TTCB Trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo filed a po­lice re­port, al­leg­ing that more than TT$500,000 in fund­ing was un­ac­count­ed for in the TTPS’ fi­nan­cials. Ear­li­er this week, the TTPS raid­ed the TTCB head of­fice, col­lect­ing what it called ‘po­ten­tial­ly key ev­i­dence’ as part of a fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

De­spite a for­mer em­ploy­ee con­fess­ing to mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing funds in a res­ig­na­tion let­ter, Chaitoo, a pro­fes­sion­al ac­coun­tant, was sub­se­quent­ly re­moved from the board af­ter mak­ing the po­lice re­port. The board al­leged he did not fol­low prop­er pro­ce­dure.

Sev­er­al cor­po­rate spon­sors paused or with­drew sup­port from TTCB com­pe­ti­tions be­cause of Chaitoo’s al­le­ga­tions. As a re­sult, in 2024, the Un­der-15, U-17 and U-19 com­pe­ti­tions were left with­out spon­sor­ship.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment over the week­end fol­low­ing the Po­lice raid on the TTCB Of­fice last Thurs­day, TTCB pres­i­dent Bas­sarath said he sees no rea­son for him­self or any mem­ber of staff to re­sign.

Bas­sarath de­nied be­ing in­ter­viewed by the TTPS in con­nec­tion with an on­go­ing fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the TTCB.

SporTT CEO Ja­son Williams said he was aware of the TTPS raid at the TTCB’s of­fices on Thurs­day.

Told the TTPS in­ves­ti­ga­tion may al­so in­volve a for­mer di­rec­tor of SPORTT, Williams said he can’t speak in de­tail about that, but he con­firmed the di­rec­tor in ques­tion was re­moved.

TTCB pres­i­dent Bas­sarath is al­so the vice-pres­i­dent of CWI.