Gail Alexan­der

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $90,000 in cash was put in­to pa­per bags and giv­en to one per­son to dis­trib­ute to 60 Life Sport par­tic­i­pants, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day.He was re­lat­ing to Par­lia­ment re­porters facts he said he had about the pro­gramme and which he had giv­en to Fi­nance Min­istry au­di­tors now prob­ing the pro­gramme.

Grif­fith has halt­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect all pre­vi­ous pro­ce­dures that al­lowed such pay­ment to any­one in­volved in Life Sport. Par­tic­i­pants will have to get a bank ac­count to re­ceive pay­ments from now on.He al­so said the name of the pro­gramme should be changed af­ter the au­dit "to sig­ni­fy a new start, as an un­for­tu­nate stig­ma has al­ready been af­fil­i­at­ed with the ex­ist­ing name."

Com­ment­ing on claims by Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi on Tues­day that a rel­a­tive of the Sport Min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary had been giv­en a Life Sport cater­ing con­tract and oth­er al­le­ga­tions, Grif­fith said he had re­ceived sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion from sources who felt un­com­fort­able about com­ing for­ward. He said he met with au­di­tors and brought that to their at­ten­tion.

He said: "It is bla­tant that we have ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in Life Sport. A bla­tant ex­am­ple is a sit­u­a­tion where funds were paid in cash and the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers (on the pro­gramme) were told."Grif­fith said funds for the 60 par­tic­i­pants in that pro­gramme – $1,500 each and to­talling $90,000 – were put in­to a pa­per bag and giv­en to one per­son to dis­trib­ute. He said the per­son would have signed to say they re­ceived it."Are we still in an era when peo­ple don't have a bank ac­count?" he asked.

"I know this hap­pened as a fact, as the peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly in­volved in the process did it and the au­di­tors will meet with those peo­ple."But why wasn't a bank ac­count used? Pay­ing peo­ple with cash is where you will get the per­cep­tion of 'ghost' par­tic­i­pants. Things like that are what I am putting an end to be­cause those things, whether or not cor­rup­tion or in­com­pe­tence or a com­bi­na­tion of both, I in­tend to weed out."

On whether the au­dit re­port might reach the po­lice, he said ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties and fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment which should not ex­ist in these times – such as hav­ing pa­per bags of cash to dis­trib­ute to par­tic­i­pants "on a street cor­ner" – showed that peo­ple in­volved in the fi­nan­cial run­ning of Life Sport were ei­ther naive or pos­si­bly in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Grif­fith said he in­tend­ed to in­put the nec­es­sary safe­guards with­in the pro­gramme to en­sure greater ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, in line with the Fi­nance Min­istry's stip­u­la­tions, to en­sure the elim­i­na­tion of any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties and ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties that may cur­rent­ly ex­ist with­in Life Sport.

He said un­til the au­dit was com­plet­ed, all pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial pro­ce­dures that al­lowed pay­ment to any­one in­volved in Life Sport had ceased with im­me­di­ate ef­fect and every cent to be ap­proved for any form of pay­ment, in­clud­ing pay­ment to par­tic­i­pants, must now come through the rel­e­vant de­part­ment of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

He added: "To en­sure ghost gangs are elim­i­nat­ed, if they do in fact cur­rent­ly ex­ist with­in the pro­gramme, a bet­ter sys­tem will be im­ple­ment­ed, with each par­tic­i­pant hav­ing to pro­vide a bank ac­count in or­der to re­ceive pay­ment. "This way, the days of drop­ping tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in cash to one per­son who would promise to pay the 60 par­tic­i­pants are over."

He said he was al­so in­formed cer­tain un­de­sir­able el­e­ments with­in the pro­gramme had used in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics and bul­ly­ing of of­fi­cials with­in Life Sport but, he said, that was sub­ject to fur­ther probe.Asked about his re­la­tion­ship with Sport Min­ster Anil Roberts, from whose port­fo­lio Life Sport was cut when the Prime Min­is­ter or­dered the au­dit, and who has de­scribed Life Sport dif­fer­ent­ly from Grif­fith, he com­ment­ed:

"I think we are all on the same page. We want to en­sure it con­tin­ues in the right way (though) it might not be per­fect. "I am ful­ly aware there have been ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties in Life Sport, ei­ther through cor­rup­tion or in­com­pe­tence or a com­bi­na­tion of both. You can't ques­tion that. You would have to be naive to say it was per­fect."

Asked if he was say­ing Roberts was naive, Grif­fith said: "I think he would say, 'Wait till the au­dit comes out be­fore mak­ing state­ments' but I say, I have facts to show there have been ques­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ties and I in­tend to deal with it."