WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Is­sues raised about the Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ment of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) for the pe­ri­ods 2020 and 2021 pre­vent­ed it from be­ing ap­proved by the mem­ber­ship at the An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing of the TTFA at the Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va, yes­ter­day.

All oth­er items on the agen­da, in­clu­sive of the bud­get, were ap­proved by the 31 mem­bers who turned up out of the to­tal of 47, Guardian Me­dia Sports was told.

A mo­tion was moved to de­lay the pass­ing of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials due to is­sues raised by East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ke­iron Ed­wards a day ago, and 17 mem­bers vot­ed in favour of, while there were 14 ab­sten­tions.  

It was agreed that the mem­bers will re­turn in 17 days’ time for an Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM), at which time the is­sues raised will be dealt with to the sat­is­fac­tion of the mem­bers, and an­oth­er at­tempt will be made to have the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials ap­proved.

The TTFA can on­ly re­ceive sub­ven­tions from the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body FI­FA once the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials are ap­proved and this was stat­ed to the mem­bers by Robert Hadad, chair­man of the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC) which is cur­rent­ly man­ag­ing the af­fairs of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Ed­wards raised some con­cerns about the va­lid­i­ty of the au­dit­ed state­ment when Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions, Char­tered Ac­coun­tants, the au­di­tors for the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion stat­ed: “We were un­able to de­ter­mine whether any ad­just­ments might have been found nec­es­sary in re­spect of record­ed and un­record­ed plant and equip­ment. This was be­cause as­sets were not tagged and there was no prop­er record keep­ing of the fixed as­set reg­is­ter, which did not in­clude prop­er de­scrip­tions of as­sets.”  

Ed­wards said that meant that the fig­ure stat­ed for fixed as­sets on the State­ment of Fi­nan­cial Po­si­tion of the Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ments was in­cor­rect.

On Tues­day, a let­ter re­spond­ing to the con­cerns of Ed­wards was sent out by the TTFA but it did not con­vince mem­bers dur­ing the meet­ing.

Ed­wards speak­ing af­ter the AGM said, “The AGM went well, we would have passed most of the items. We passed the bud­get, we passed most of the items. The au­dit­ed state­ments were post­poned for 17 days, we must have some con­sul­ta­tion with the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee about it and we would have that in the next 17 days, in an at­tempt to pass it at an EGM.

“These is­sues were there, it’s just a time for us to have fur­ther dis­cus­sions on it and we will come up with some so­lu­tions and be able to pass the au­dit­ed state­ments where per­sons will be com­fort­able.

“There were some things to ad­dress and we will treat with it, but there are still things that need to be ad­dressed,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

At­tempts to get a com­ment from the Amiel Mo­hammed of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion proved fu­tile as calls to his phone went unan­swered.

Ed­di­son Dean of Club San­do said he does not see any­thing chang­ing ahead of the EGM in 17 days’ time.