Lo­cal foot­ball mem­bers are ques­tion­ing the de­ci­sion to ap­point Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions, a pre­mier out­sourc­ing & ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices provider in the Caribbean, as the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's au­di­tor for 2021, 2022 and be­yond.

This will be de­cid­ed at a vir­tu­al Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) of the T&TFA on Mon­day at 5:30 pm. The de­ci­sion to pro­pose Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions as a re­place­ment for Madan Ram­nar­ine and Com­pa­ny comes af­ter a lit­er­al jug­gling ex­er­cise that even­tu­al­ly led to the res­ig­na­tion of Madan Ram­nar­ine and Com­pa­ny on De­cem­ber 31 last year (2021).

Guardian Me­dia Sports was told that the Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee host­ed the 2020/2021 T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) on Sep­tem­ber 26, last year and pro­posed the ap­point­ment of Grant Thorn­ton Or­bit So­lu­tions (GTO) as the ex­ter­nal au­di­tors for the fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2020 and 2021.

At the 2020/2021 AGM, the TTFA Mem­ber­ship iden­ti­fied a cler­i­cal er­ror in the 2019 AGM Min­utes which led to Madan Ram­nar­ine & Co be­ing ap­point­ed as the au­di­tors for TTFA’s Fi­nan­cial State­ments for 2020. The AGM then re­con­firmed that Madan Ram­nar­ine & Co be ap­point­ed as au­di­tors for the TTFA’s Fi­nan­cial State­ment for 2020 and Grant Thorn­ton Or­bit So­lu­tion be ap­point­ed the au­di­tors for the TTFA’s Fi­nan­cial State­ments for 2021.

How­ev­er, on Oc­to­ber 6, last year, Madan Ram­nar­ine & Co re­signed and the nor­mal­iza­tion com­mit­tee, be­ing led by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad ap­proached (GTO) to be the au­di­tor for 2020. They were al­so ex­pect­ed to do the fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2021.

In a sud­den turn of events, how­ev­er, GTO de­clined the ap­point­ment fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Madan Ram­nar­ine and Com­pa­ny, there­by open­ing the door for Hadad and com­pa­ny to ap­proach Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions, BDO and PKF to sub­mit pro­pos­als to con­duct the au­dits of the TTFA’s fi­nan­cials.

Both Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions and PKF were the on­ly ones to sub­mit pro­pos­als as the oth­er com­pa­ny (BDO) pulled out based on a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est due to their pro­vi­sions of foren­sic and oth­er ser­vices in oth­er ter­ri­to­ries for FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF.

The nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee in a re­lease ex­plained to its mem­bers that it re­ceived pro­pos­als from Aegis and PKF and based on their analy­sis of the pro­pos­als as well as the cost dif­fer­en­tials, Aegis' pro­pos­al was ac­cept­ed and is be­ing pro­posed to the TTFA Gen­er­al Mem­ber­ship for ap­proval.

Yes­ter­day Sel­by Browne, pres­i­dent of the Vet­er­an Foot­ball Foun­da­tion (VFF) and Akel Baig, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion wrote to the Hadad and com­pa­ny ex­press­ing their con­cern.

Baig in his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the NFA is de­mand­ing an­swers to; why has Madan Ram­nar­ine re­signed; why three dif­fer­ent ex­ter­nal au­dit­ing firms by the NC in one year; what did it cost the TTFA to re­tain three au­dit­ing firms; de­mand­ing a state­ment of in­de­pen­dence from new au­di­tors; what was the pro­cure­ment method used to se­lect an ex­ter­nal au­di­tor; how does Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions in­tend to deal with the state of bank­rupt­cy high­light­ed by the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee; and how many au­dits have Aegis done un­der bank­rupt­cy and in­sol­ven­cy pro­ceed­ings.

Browne al­so had some ques­tions for the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee that cen­tre around:

1. The pro­pos­al for an­oth­er au­dit firm with­out a pro­file of that com­pa­ny is at­tached to the No­tice, as was the case with the pro­pos­al for Grant Thorn­ton; 2. The rea­son for the re­place­ment of Grant Thorn­ton, while it is won­dered whether it is their non-in­de­pen­dence of the TTFA, CON­CA­CAF and FI­FA;

3. Whether the process of ex­tend­ing in­vi­ta­tions to sub­mit pro­pos­als from all the ma­jor ac­count­ing firms with op­er­a­tions in the Re­pub­lic was uti­lized to in­clude the big four glob­al­ly, name­ly, KP­MG, PWC, De­loitte and EY.