Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Sacked T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol (TTB­BC) chair­man Ab­dul Haqq has bro­ken his si­lence, in­sist­ing that he nev­er au­tho­rised ap­proval for the $1.9 mil­lion box­ing card to Gio­van­ni Potts.In fact, the for­mer chair­man in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day re­vealed that there was a breach of prop­er pro­ce­dures re­gard­ing re­quest of fund­ing for the box­ing card.But even as Haqq at­tempt­ed to dis­tance him­self from the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the ap­proval of the box­ing card to the son of TTB­BC spe­cial ad­vis­er Boxu Potts, board mem­ber Sam Wor­rell con­firmed to the Guardian that ap­proval for the card was grant­ed in No­vem­ber at the East­ern Re­gion­al Com­plex."The card was ap­proved by the pre­vi­ous board," he said."The board put to­geth­er a com­mit­tee to look af­ter these pro­pos­als from var­i­ous pro­mot­ers."Yes, there was dis­sent­ing in­ter­est but the ma­jor­i­ty ruled in favour of the card."If in the board's wis­dom we saw it fit to ap­prove the card it was a col­lec­tive agree­ment...No­body placed a gun to our heads."We went through the cost analy­sis and it was sent to min­istry."We had four board mem­bers and a tech­ni­cal in­di­vid­ual who was in­vit­ed to be part of the meet­ing."Ri­car­do (Phillip) ob­ject­ed to the box­ing card but at the end of the day, the ma­jor­i­ty ap­proved the card."You can­not give cheap cards and pen­ny-pinch if you want to pro­mote box­ing."Cheap box­ing cards on­ly at­tract drunk­ards," Wor­rell said.As to who signed off on the ap­proval re­mains a mys­tery, as nei­ther Haqq nor Wor­rell could say.While Haqq main­tained that he did not sign the ap­proval form, Wor­rell told the Guardian that he was un­cer­tain as to who signed the form.Wor­rell said, how­ev­er, that in the ab­sence of the chair­man, the vice-chair­man is en­ti­tled to grant ap­proval for the is­suance of a box­ing card.

Haqq breaks si­lence

Haqq opt­ed to shed light on the is­sue yes­ter­day, af­ter an ex­clu­sive Sun­day Guardian re­port high­light­ing ap­proval of the box­ing card that is be­ing or­gan­ised by Potts' son, Gio­van­ni .Potts ad­mit­ted to the Guardian that his son had ap­plied for a box­ing card to fund a Box­ing Day event at Jean Pierre Com­plex, Port-of-Spain.Haqq ex­plained that un­der his lead­er­ship, var­i­ous com­mit­tees in­clu­sive of tech­ni­cal, fi­nance, ad­min­is­tra­tive and le­gal were set up to deal with the such is­sues.He said the tech­ni­cal teams com­pris­ing board mem­bers-Zaid Mo­hammed, Sam Wor­rell, Ri­car­do Phillip and Shar­ma Stroude were man­dat­ed to look at the par­tic­u­lar card in ques­tion.The for­mer chair­man ex­plained: "What nor­mal­ly hap­pens is when the pro­pos­al for the box­ing card is re­viewed the tech­ni­cal team would sub­mit a re­port to me with re­gard to their find­ings."I want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that no re­port was sub­mit­ted to me re­gard­ing this $1.9 mil­lion box­ing card," he said."I con­tin­u­ous­ly re­quest­ed the re­port and was giv­en the run-around."How the pro­pos­al for the box­ing card land­ed up at the min­istry for fund­ing is news to me?"I want to state clear­ly that the prop­er pro­ce­dures were not fol­lowed in re­spect to this par­tic­u­lar box­ing card."Haqq said he raised con­cerns af­ter re­al­is­ing that the Box­ing Day event was be­ing ad­ver­tised via the me­dia."How could this event be ad­ver­tised?" he said."As the for­mer chair­man of the TTB­BC board, I re­quest­ed the in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing this par­tic­u­lar box­ing card and it was nev­er sent to me."In­stead, I was by­passed and the pro­pos­al was sent di­rect­ly to the Sports Min­istry. "What has me even more con­cerned is that I am hop­ing that my elec­tron­ic sig­na­ture was not af­fixed to any doc­u­ment with­out my knowl­edge." The for­mer chair­man al­so took is­sue with claims by the spe­cial ad­vis­er that board mem­bers were fired be­cause they failed to com­ply with the World Box­ing Cham­pi­onship rules and en­sure that the var­i­ous med­ical tests were con­duct­ed on a box­er.

De­scrib­ing the claim as a "bla­tant lie," Haqq said he was in­formed by med­ical doc­tor Kevin An­toine, who is al­so a board mem­ber and the lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the box­ing world body, that all med­ical tests were sub­mit­ted."Copies of the tests were sub­mit­ted...We need to make sense out of this en­tire is­sue," he said."Why wasn't the med­ical di­rec­tor dis­missed if the med­ical re­port was not sub­mit­ted; Mr Potts' claims are to­tal­ly false."Our dis­missal from the board is part of big­ger con­spir­a­cy be­cause we were not com­ply­ing with the whims and fan­cies of the spe­cial ad­vis­er."Potts blocked from at­tend­ing meet­ings with pro­mot­ers.Haqq fur­ther claimed that thingsturned "sour" af­ter he re­fused to al­low Potts to be part of meet­ings held with oth­er pro­mot­ers."I felt it was wrong and I ob­ject­ed to Potts be­ing part of these meet­ings," he said."Mr Potts' son is a box­ing pro­mot­er and it would have been wrong for me to al­low him to lis­ten to pro­pos­als from oth­er pro­mot­ers."

The for­mer chair­man said his dis­missal did not come as a sur­prise af­ter he ap­proved a box­ing card for pro­mot­er Tans­ley Thomp­son to the tune of $900,000 and it was lat­er re­duced to $296,000."The board was im­pressed by the pro­pos­al sub­mit­ted by Mr Thomp­son and ap­proval was grant­ed be­cause we con­sid­ered this par­tic­u­lar case to be a suc­cess sto­ry," he said."I rec­om­mend­ed the box­ing card and for­ward­ed the pro­pos­al to the min­istry."Shock­ing­ly, I learnt that the spe­cial ad­vis­er had some is­sues...I ques­tioned his in­volve­ment in this mat­ter and was told that he was in charge of box­ing."The next thing I know is that the box­ing card was dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced."We were say­ing what is good for one, sup­posed to be good for all."I have had to apol­o­gise to pro­mot­ers for what was tran­spir­ing at TTB­BC."We could not speak to the min­is­ter be­cause he in­sist­ed that we speak to the spe­cial ad­vis­er."Peo­ple like our­selves who stand up are of­ten vil­i­fied...this is why peo­ple do not come for­ward."

Den­nis: Potts' claims are to­tal­ly false

Al­so speak­ing to the Guardian yes­ter­day was axed board mem­ber at­tor­ney Janette Den­nis who al­so de­nied Potts' claim that a box­ing card was sub­mit­ted with­out a med­ical re­port or box­ing con­tract."This is not the case at all...There is a med­ical doc­tor on the board and he cer­ti­fied that the med­ical re­ports and the con­tracts were in place," she said."We know for a fact that these things were done."Den­nis said while she was not part of the tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee re­spon­si­ble for ap­prov­ing the box­ing card, she claimed that on nu­mer­ous in­stances the is­sue of "pref­er­en­tial treat­ment" was raised."We raised is­sue with what was tak­ing place...We had re­quests to favour par­tic­u­lar pro­mot­ers," she said."All I can say is that as the le­gal per­son on the board, I know for a fact that the board agreed that the chair­man was the per­son re­spon­si­ble for sign­ing off on the is­suance of box­ing cards."This was un­der­stood and this process is sup­posed to fol­lowed. "We ob­ject­ed to nu­mer­ous things and this is the end re­sult."Al­so tak­ing is­sue with claims of non- per­for­mance, Den­nis said in one year the TTB­BC had re­draft­ed the 1934 box­ing leg­is­la­tion and car­ried out all di­rec­tives.At­tempts to con­tact Thomp­son and An­toine proved fu­tile.