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Monday, March 3, 2025

TTFA absent from Court garnishee hearing

by

Walter Alibey
1817 days ago
20200312
TTFA president William Wallace

TTFA president William Wallace

The High Court is set to rule on a gar­nishee or­der against the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) on Mon­day at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain.

This af­ter Tues­day's hear­ing had to be ad­journed be­cause of a no-show by the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia Sports learnt there was al­so no TTFA of­fi­cial at the hear­ing.

Yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion William Wal­lace said his At­tor­ney's non-ap­pear­ance was due to no com­mu­ni­ca­tion reach­ing him for Tues­day's hear­ing.

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han said: "Ravi Ra­jku­mar in­di­cat­ed to me that he was not in­formed of this mat­ter yes­ter­day (Tues­day) and he will go to the courts to­day (yes­ter­day) to see what would have hap­pened with re­gards to com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the mat­ter, but his of­fice re­ceived no com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We (TTFA) were not re­quired to be there be­cause this was a mat­ter where we had to be rep­re­sent­ed."

Kendall Walkes, the for­mer TTFA Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor who was fired from his job in 2016 has since sued and won over $5 mil­lion for wrong­ful dis­missal.

How­ev­er, the TTFA's in­abil­i­ty to pay the amount led to Walkes, through his lawyer Melis­sa Keisha Roberts-John, tak­ing out a gar­nishee or­der to freeze the ac­counts of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion on Feb­ru­ary 13, and there­by pre­vent­ing the TTFA the use of the ac­counts to con­duct any of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's busi­ness.

<Walkes lawyer ready to ne­go­ti­ate>

Walkes has since re­quest­ed a $2.5 mil­lion pay­ment to lift the gar­nishee or­der, which the TTFA made clear, it could not pay.

Roberts-John said the or­der was tak­en out be­cause of poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the part of the TTFA, and she echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments when con­tact­ed, as both par­ties knew about the ap­pli­ca­tion.

"They were served with the ac­tion (ap­pli­ca­tion), so I don't think that the mat­ter took their non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion or non-ap­pear­ance in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. The mat­ter was ad­journed, but not in light of their non-ap­pear­ance. The onus is on you if you want to come and de­fend the ap­pli­ca­tion but if not, a de­ci­sion can be made in your ab­sence. I will stick to my ini­tial state­ment as to why we reached this stage- lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion."

She not­ed: "I have been send­ing in my cor­re­spon­dence to them in Feb­ru­ary, I have got­ten noth­ing in writ­ing with any counter-pro­pos­al, so lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion."

The TTFA's no-show didn't seem to sur­prise Roberts-John, who want­ed the TTFA to know fur­ther, that they're will­ing to ne­go­ti­ate for less than the ask­ing $2.5 mil­lion amount, how­ev­er, she made it clear you can­not ne­go­ti­ate with some­one who is re­luc­tant to do so.

"The claimant Mr Walkes is will­ing to re­solve the is­sue that's why a pro­pos­al was sent out. We are open to dis­cus­sion be­cause we would like to re­solve this mat­ter. We know of the sum and we know the TTFA can­not pay that in a lump sum, so we are mind­ed to have some type of pro­pos­al-plan, pay­ment-plan, some­thing like that, but it goes back to com­mu­ni­ca­tion. If I am reach­ing out but you are not reach­ing out in re­turn, what can I do?"

Wal­lace in his re­sponse de­nied there is any break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the par­ties and said his as­so­ci­a­tion cur­rent­ly does not have a fig­ure to ne­go­ti­ate with. "We said to them that we would come to the ta­ble with an of­fer, we have noth­ing to put for­ward yet. We are the ones try­ing to raise the mon­ey and we are try­ing to come up with a fig­ure, so the ball is in our court at the mo­ment."

Mean­while, dur­ing the hear­ing, the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of First Cit­i­zens in­formed the court that it would file ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence of its ser­vice fees for the TTFA ac­counts be­fore the next court hear­ing, next Mon­day.


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