T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) cred­i­tors will not re­ceive pay­ment be­fore Christ­mas Day as was ini­tial­ly planned, due to the re­cent Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) called by the mem­ber­ships on De­cem­ber 10.

At that meet­ing, a vote was ap­proved for an elec­tion of a new ex­ec­u­tive and that meet­ing is to take place by March 18, 2023.

The meet­ing al­so agreed that the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee needs to wrap-up its man­date be­fore the March dead­line. How­ev­er, those de­ci­sions have put a spoke in the wheel of the cred­i­tors who were to re­ceive their pay­ments by Christ­mas Day.

A re­lease from Maria Daniel, Trustee in the Pro­pos­al of TTFA, ap­point­ed on No­vem­ber 8, 2021, said: “Pur­suant to Sec­tion 44 of the Bank­rupt­cy In­sol­ven­cy Act, I do con­firm that the Pro­pos­al was ap­proved and passed in the High Court of Jus­tice on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022. While it would have been my great­est joy to com­mence pay­ments to all ap­proved Cred­i­tors be­fore Christ­mas day, the re­cent de­vel­op­ments raised at an emer­gency AGM held in ear­ly De­cem­ber (called by some of the mem­bers), has raised some con­cerns by the fi­nancier as it re­lates to the non-fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments and terms and con­di­tions of the fi­nanc­ing.”

She not­ed: “We would like to re­it­er­ate to the cred­i­tors, some of whom are mem­bers of the TTFA gen­er­al as­sem­bly, that the pro­pos­al laid out to the cred­i­tors and the courts is a process and not sim­ply a pay­ment to set­tle the lega­cy debt of TTFA.”

“In ad­di­tion to the set­tle­ment of the TTFA’s out­stand­ing debt, the pro­pos­al re­quires that the TTFA’s gov­er­nance be re­struc­tured and over­sight strength­ened so that the mis­man­age­ment that has hap­pened in the past, would not re­cur. For ref­er­ence, I draw your at­ten­tion to sec­tion 1.7 of the Pro­pos­al: (a) The TTFA will im­ple­ment the fol­low­ing to as­sist with man­ag­ing gen­er­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive costs: ie. Es­tab­lish­ing and im­ple­ment­ing new pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures for en­gag­ing sup­pli­ers. ii. Prop­er gov­er­nance in the man­age­ment and con­tract­ing of new coach­es in line with the grants pro­vid­ed by FI­FA, CON­CA­CAF, gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions, and oth­er pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions. iii. En­sure fi­nan­cial in­tegri­ty is re­stored with funds re­ceived for the de­vel­op­ment of the game; or for spe­cif­ic events be­ing used as it should, to give sup­pli­ers, staff and coach­es the con­fi­dence that ser­vices that are prop­er­ly pro­cured will be paid on a time­ly ba­sis. iv. Es­tab­lish­ment of sound trans­paren­cy prac­tices to give spon­sors and oth­er donors the con­fi­dence that mon­ey do­nat­ed is spent for its in­tend­ed pur­pose sup­port­ed by cost-ef­fec­tive process­es that en­able funds to be in­vest­ed in the de­vel­op­ment of the sport and its sports­men and women.”

The pro­pos­al to be fund­ed via an in­ter­est-free US$3.5 mil­lion fi­nan­cial in­stru­ment, was ap­proved unan­i­mous­ly by the cred­i­tors where­by val­i­dat­ed cred­i­tors owed up to TT$200,000 will be paid in full and bal­ances above that will be pro-rat­ed. The TTFA/NC is set to face le­gal bat­tles from for­mer na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick and Pe­ter Miller, the for­mer mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer, both of whom have de­cid­ed to chal­lenge the pro­pos­al of­fered, while an­oth­er cred­i­tor Jack Warn­er agreed to not chal­lenge the of­fer.

Daniel urged that the pro­pos­al should not be tak­en light­ly, say­ing: “Please note, the above sec­tion of the Pro­pos­al is not to be tak­en light­ly, as it was agreed with the Fi­nancier pri­or to con­fir­ma­tion of the fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment. This is al­so aligned with the man­date giv­en to FI­FA ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee as a con­di­tion for FI­FA’s con­tin­ued in­volve­ment in T&T foot­ball. To re­it­er­ate, the mis­takes of the past ad­min­is­tra­tions can­not be re­peat­ed. If the time is not giv­en to the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and the cur­rent man­age­ment team to im­ple­ment the steps out­lined above, the suc­cess of this re­struc­tur­ing ef­fort will be at risk.”

“Notwith­stand­ing, as stat­ed in the Pro­pos­al, all pay­ments to Un­se­cured Cred­i­tors shall be paid with­in six (6) months of the “Ef­fec­tive Date”. The “Ef­fec­tive Date” means the date on which the Pro­pos­al be­comes ef­fec­tive, be­ing the date on which the Court ap­proves the Pro­pos­al, which as stat­ed above is Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022.”

“This means that legal­ly the pay­ments to the Cred­i­tors can be made on or be­fore March 28, 2023. If no agree­ment can be reached with the fi­nancier be­fore the end of the six (6) month pe­ri­od, the Pro­pos­al shall be deemed to have failed. I will con­tin­ue my close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee and with the Fi­nancier to dri­ve the need­ed changes that will give the Fi­nancier the com­fort that they need to re­lease the funds so that the pay­ment can oc­cur as soon as pos­si­ble be­fore the March dead­line.”