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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Rowley on alleged Life Sport corruption: Cheque stubs found in dump

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20140804

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said he has fresh ev­i­dence of cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment in the Life Sport pro­gramme and showed sev­er­al cheque stubs which he said were be­ing dumped at the Beetham land­fill.He al­so al­leged there were bank work­ers in­volved in the cor­rup­tion.Row­ley spoke at a press con­fer­ence at Par­lia­ment, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.He said the stubs were found in garbage bags and were made out to peo­ple from dif­fer­ent ar­eas, in­clud­ing Mal­abar, Mor­vant, Barataria, Bagatelle and La Ro­maine.

He added: "But the ac­tu­al cheques were writ­ten for June 2015. Some­body changed it with a pen to June 2014 and ini­tialled all of them and the cheques were cashed."I know that cheques which were mis­print­ed, no one can change that with a pen and cash them."The Life Sport pro­gramme does not end in the min­istry. It ends all the way to the bank be­cause there are per­sons in the bank who would have been cash­ing these cheques with­out the prop­er checks and bal­ances."

He said he in­tend­ed to pass on the in­for­ma­tion to act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and called for a full foren­sic au­dit in­to sev­er­al as­pects of the pro­gramme, in­clud­ing the Rur­al Sport pro­gramme, the Hoop of Life, the Mal­abar Foot­ball Club, Ari­ma In­vi­ta­tion­al Chal­lenge and the Twi­light Games.Row­ley al­so de­mand­ed that the au­di­tor gen­er­al ex­am­ined those is­sues. On the find­ings of the Cen­tral Au­dit Com­mit­tee on the Life Sport pro­gramme Row­ley ex­pressed lit­tle con­fi­dence, de­scrib­ing them as "very re­stric­tive."

The Mal­abar Foot­ball Club, in par­tic­u­lar, Row­ley said, was paid some $59,000 a month and that sum was ap­proved short­ly af­ter Anil Roberts be­came sport min­is­ter.Roberts re­signed from his min­is­te­r­i­al post last Thurs­day. He re­signed as MP yes­ter­day and his seat was de­clared va­cant.

"In June, when the Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice, ap­proval was grant­ed for Mal­abar Foot­ball Club to re­ceive $59,000 a month. The re­quest for the monies was to be used to pay a chair­man, a vice chair­man, a coach, a sec­re­tary and stipend for 18 play­ers," Row­ley said.He said he had writ­ten to Roberts ask­ing for $40,000 for the Diego Mar­tin Foot­ball league, but re­ceived no re­ply.

In the Min­istry of Works, Row­ley claimed, there were sim­i­lar acts of cor­rup­tion tak­ing place, adding: "Life Sport is just a win­dow in­to the na­ture of gov­er­nance of the Gov­ern­ment."


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