An at­tempt by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA) to pre­vent the dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing Se­moy Hack­ett's with­draw­al from last month's IAAF World Cham­pi­onship in Moscow, Rus­sia, has left Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts seek to le­gal coun­sel on the mat­ter.

Roberts, who ad­dressed the me­dia at the Min­istry of Sport, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, said the NAAA was try­ing its best to pre­vent the pub­lic and the Min­istry from de­tails as to why Hack­ett was al­lowed to trav­el to the World event, which she sub­se­quent­ly with­drew from.

A writ­ten ex­change be­tween two par­ties, the NAAA and the IAAF, which was re­vealed ver­bal­ly to the me­dia by Roberts, led him to be­lieve that the NAAA was at­tempt­ing to claim Gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ence in its af­fairs, fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween the Min­istry of Sport and the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body for ath­let­ics.

Hack­ett test­ed pos­i­tive for banned sub­stances both in 2011 and last year. She stopped re­ceiv­ing funds from the Elite Ath­letes As­sis­tance Pro­gramme and was twice banned by the NAAA.

She was al­so banned by her Uni­ver­si­ty af­ter she re­turned a pos­i­tive test at the 2012 Na­tion­al Col­le­giate Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (NCAA) Di­vi­sion I Out­door Track and Field Cham­pi­onships in Iowa, Unit­ed States.

The NAAA's dis­ci­pli­nary pan­el lat­er lift­ed the ban to al­low her to per­form at the World Cham­pi­onship.

The Min­istry met with the NAAA to dis­cuss Hack­ett's trip to Moscow, and was told by the NAAA that the IAAF in­struct­ed that Hack­ett was al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Roberts, on­ly af­ter be­ing pressed to­ward the end of the meet­ing by the Sport Min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ash­win Creed, chair­man of the NAAA's dis­ci­pli­nary pan­el George Com­mis­siong, ad­mit­ted that the same let­ter rec­om­mend­ed that Hack­ett not run.

"A let­ter that was sent to the NAAA, ad­vis­ing them that even though their dis­ci­pli­nary pan­el has de­cid­ed to lift the ban, and, there­fore, Se­moy Hack­ett can le­git­i­mate­ly run, they rec­om­mend that she does not run," Roberts said.

The let­ter, which Com­mis­siong spoke of was nev­er pro­vid­ed to the min­is­ter de­spite his re­quests.

The NAAA sub­se­quent­ly wrote to the IAAF in­di­cat­ing the min­is­ter's re­quest for in­for­ma­tion of the IAAF's po­si­tion on Hack­ett, writ­ten in the let­ter.

Min­is­ter Roberts said the IAAF replied, "It is un­clear to us on what ba­sis is the Min­is­ter of Sport in­ter­ven­ing in this stage of the case.

In any event, we would re­spect­ful­ly ad­vise to lim­it the dis­clo­sure of doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to this case un­til its con­clu­sion by the CAS (Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport)."

Roberts added, "And, to­day, I am sor­ry that we can­not con­tin­ue to dis­cuss the is­sue be­cause the NAAA for some in­ex­plic­a­ble rea­son, wrote to a mem­ber of the IAAF med­ical arm, not the le­gal arm, stat­ing that the Min­is­ter is in­ter­est­ed in in­for­ma­tion... 'Should they pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion?'

And the IAAF said, 'do not pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion to the Min­is­ter, be­cause it is sub ju­dice.'"

He added, "That does not form, in my opin­ion, a sub­stan­tive mat­ter of ev­i­dence be­fore any Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion." In that re­gard, Roberts said he will seek le­gal coun­sel.

"Why is the NAAA try­ing to hide this let­ter? Why are they pur­port­ing to en­sure that the pop­u­la­tion does not find out what has hap­pened?"

Roberts recog­nised that the NAAA was an au­tonomous body, but said it re­ceives 70-80 per cent of its bud­get from the Gov­ern­ment, and should an­swer to the tax­pay­ers.

"The Min­istry pays for every­body to at­tend the Moscow World Cham­pi­onship, the ath­letes who per­form and do not test pos­i­tive, the Min­istry through the NAAA, will re­ceive a re­fund based on their clean per­for­mance. See­ing that Se­moy Hack­ett did not per­form and left, the IAAF will not re­fund the NAAA. There­fore, the tax­pay­ers have paid for a cheater to go to the World Cham­pi­onship. And, there­fore, the Gov­ern­ment is very much in­volved," said Roberts.

"They (NAAA) state oral­ly that they have a ze­ro tol­er­ance po­si­tion (on dop­ing), but their ac­tions at every junc­tion try to lim­it in­for­ma­tion, try to hide in­for­ma­tion, they have try to as­suage the minds of the pop­u­la­tion by mis­in­for­ma­tion, poor analy­sis and dis­sem­i­na­tion of facts that are not all to­ward cor­rect and that is very wor­ry­ing.

And, I call on the mem­ber­ship of the NAAA to call a meet­ing and get to the bot­tom of this."

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