Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The lo­cal au­dit­ing firm used by Con­ca­caf was not in­de­pen­dent and pos­sessed clear con­flicts of in­ter­est.Con­cerns were raised about the in­de­pen­dence of Ken­ny Ram­per­sad & Co and Ken­ny Ram­per­sad him­self who was per­son­al­ly in­volved in Jack Warn­er's busi­ness­es.Ram­per­sad al­so act­ed at times as per­son­al ac­coun­tant for Chuck Blaz­er and Con­ca­caf.

This was re­vealed in the 113-page re­port by the In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee of Con­ca­caf and which was pre­sent­ed by for­mer chief jus­tice of Bar­ba­dos Sir David Sim­mons on Fri­day in Pana­ma at a Con­ca­caf Con­gress.The Com­mit­tee found ev­i­dence in­di­cat­ing that Ken­ny Ram­per­sad & Co con­tin­ued to work as ac­coun­tants for the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence (COE) af­ter 1997, notwith­stand­ing con­cerns in an ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee over the firm's lack of in­de­pen­dence.

The re­port stat­ed Ram­per­sad would as­sist in prepar­ing Con­ca­caf's fi­nan­cial state­ments which he had to au­dit.Ef­forts by the com­mit­tee to re­quest in­for­ma­tion from Ram­per­sad proved fu­tile.Page 94 of the re­port said Warn­er con­sis­tent­ly rep­re­sent­ed to the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee and the Con­gress that the Con­ca­caf fi­nan­cial state­ments were sub­ject to in­de­pen­dent au­dits but Warn­er knew that they were not.

The re­port stat­ed, "In re­al­i­ty, Warn­er and Blaz­er had arranged for the au­dits to be con­duct­ed by Ken­ny Ram­per­sad, an ac­coun­tant who clear­ly lacked the in­de­pen­dence to con­duct a prop­er au­dit and did not en­gage in ac­tiv­i­ties one would as­so­ciate with an au­dit."At a Con­ca­caf ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee meet­ing held in De­cem­ber 1996, con­cerns were raised about the au­dit­ing firm.

The re­port states, "At that meet­ing, an ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber point­ed out that there was a prob­lem with Ken­ny Ram­per­sad & Co serv­ing as ac­coun­tants for the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence project while at the same time serv­ing as Con­ca­caf's au­di­tor."In re­sponse, Blaz­er, in Warn­er's pres­ence said, "A sep­a­rate re­view of the funds for the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence will have to be done by some­one else lo­cal­ly; how­ev­er, Ram­per­sad & Co will do the over­all au­dit for Con­ca­caf since they were in­de­pen­dent from Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence."

In Au­gust 1997, Warn­er sent a mem­o­ran­dum to the same ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber at­tach­ing a writ­ten pro­file of an au­dit and ac­count­ing firm based in T&T.Warn­er wrote that the firm "had been ap­point­ed to au­dit the ex­pen­di­ture at the Con­ca­caf Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence" and that the ap­point­ment took ef­fect on Ju­ly 1, 1997.The prin­ci­pal ac­coun­tant of the firm iden­ti­fied in Warn­er's memo was in­ter­viewed but said he had nev­er been re­tained to work as an ac­coun­tant for the COE.

Blaz­er and Warn­er'sper­son­al ac­coun­tant

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, Ram­per­sad signed a mort­gage deed as sec­re­tary to Ren­raw In­vest­ments Ltd and as sec­re­tary to CCAM and Com­pa­ny Ltd, com­pa­nies owned by Warn­er.The trans­ac­tion was re­lat­ed to a loan in 1998 se­cured by a mort­gage in­ter­est in the COE prop­er­ty.

The re­port states, "Even more sig­nif­i­cant is the fact that the mort­gage deed signed by Ram­per­sad shows that the COE prop­er­ty is owned by Ren­raw and CCAM, but the Con­ca­caf fi­nan­cial state­ments au­dit­ed by Ram­per­sad that cov­er this pe­ri­od re­port the COE prop­er­ty as a Con­ca­caf as­set.

"Ram­per­sad al­so act­ed as Blaz­er's per­son­al ac­coun­tant when he pro­vid­ed a let­ter in 2009 to a bank pro­vid­ing mort­gage fi­nanc­ing to Blaz­er. The bank had re­quest­ed that Blaz­er sub­mit a let­ter on his ac­coun­tant's let­ter­head de­tail­ing his as­sets."