The four dismissed elected officers of the T&T Football Association (TTFA) now face a major financial challenge after FIFA, the world governing body for the sport rejected their claim to have a sole arbitrator sit in judgement of their challenge of being removed from office by FIFA.
The former TTFA president William Wallace and his three vice president Clynt Taylor, Joseph 'Sam' Phillip and Susan Joseph-Warrick, requests a sole arbitrator that, depending on the case, would reduce fees to $10,000 and expedite the process. Currently, the appellants have paid the first CHF 1,000 to file the appeal, but FIFA responded by Tuesday's deadline and requested that it wanted three arbitrators to adjudicate on the matters raised.
Replying to Antonio De Quesada, the Head of Arbitration at CAS on Tuesday, FIFA made their position on the proposal quite clear. The letter said, in part:
“We inform you that we do not agree with the Appellant’s proposal to appoint a sole arbitrator in the matter at hand. Indeed, the present dispute concerns an exceptional situation that has led FIFA to take important governance-related measures in one of its members in accordance with the FIFA Statutes.”
As such, FIFA said they favoured a three-member panel to hear the dispute.
It will now fall to the President of the CAS Appeals Arbitration Division or her deputy to decide how many arbitrators will hear the dispute after both parties have filed their briefs.
However, until that decision is made, the former TTFA officers through their attorneys Dr Emir Crowne and Matthew GW Gayle, have until Friday to move to the next phase of the process which is to file an appellate brief, a more comprehensive and detailed document containing all the legal arguments as to why the United TTFA officers should win the case.
Gayle told Guardian Media Sports on Thursday that: "We are focus on putting together a cogent and compelling appeal brief until that deadline is met."
The brief is expected to contain details of the case, outlining who are the witnesses, experts and other informative details. The matter is registered as CAS2020/A/6915.
FIFA will then need to reply by Monday (April 20) by producing its arguments in full details after which CAS will examine both sides briefs before determining a time for the matter to commence at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
CAS appeals cost about $20,000 with the appellant’s legal costs generally doubling that amount.
In a video statement on April 1, on their crowdsourcing ‘gofundme’ page, Wallace maintains that he is still in charge of the TTFA, saying: “To be clear I remain president of TTFA based on our constitution… I can only be removed by the operation of the TTFA’s constitution, not by FIFA.”
However, Wallace and his team have raised part of the money fund via the fundraising page showed no movement from April 1 total contribution was at $3,155 and up to press time on Thursday (April 16) it stood at $3,205 with the latest donation of $50 made on April 11. The target by Wallace's team is TT$300,000 to $500,000 or the estimated US$25,000 for the CAS appeal.
One of those that have donated is Keith Look Loy, the TTFA’s former technical committee chair under the Wallace administration, who paid in $200. Look Loy is the president of the Trinidad and Tobago Super League, who has said that the league’s clubs have agreed on a donation of $2,000.
A supporter Elvin Edwards has made the single biggest contribution of US$1,000 with Wallace contributing the second-largest amount of US$500.
On March 17, FIFA wrote to the TTFA advising them that they were appointing a normalisation committee to take over the running of the heavily indebted association. However, despite protests from the executive because such a move would be in breach of the TTFA constitution, FIFA proceeded to name members of the committee on March 26.
In FIFA's General Secretary General Fatma Samoura letter to TTFA General Secretary Ramesh Ramdhan, pointed to article 8 paragraph 2 of the Fifa Statutes’ as it outlined FIFA's concerns about the financial status of the TTFA. FIFA said its fact-finding mission (February 25-27) found, among other concerns, that the “overall condition of financial management and financial governance extremely low or non-existent at the TTFA.
“There are currently no formal internal policies and internal controls in place, such as procurement, the delegation of financial authorities, financial planning and budgeting, effective oversight of funding and management reporting, which are necessary to meet the TTFA’s objectives.”
FIFA also said there is a lack of documented policies and procedures, financial planning and management of statutory liabilities adding that there's no short or long-term plan to address the “urgent” situation.
FIFA also pointed out that current debt is USD$5.5m (TT$37.4 million), the TTFA “faces a very real risk of both insolvency and illiquidity if corrective measures are not applied urgently.”
As such, the normalisation committee has been mandated to run the daily affairs of the TTFA, establish a debt repayment plan that is implementable by the TTFA, as well as review and amend the TTFA statutes and ensure their compliance with FIFA statutes and requires before submitting them to the TTFA Congress for approval. The committee will also organize and conduct elections of a new TTFA executive for a four-year term.
The Normalization Committee was appointed on March 27, with businessman Robert Hadad, attorney Judy Daniel and retired banker Nigel Romano with two other members to be named.
Wallace and his three vice presidents were elected on November 24, 2019, to a four-year term of office.