An ex­tend­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion by ac­count­ing firm Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PWC) has re­vealed al­leged col­lu­sion be­tween for­mer Sportt Com­pa­ny Di­rec­tor Im­ran Jan and cur­rent T&T Crick­et Board pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath.

The foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion ex­am­ined dozens of unau­tho­rised record­ings be­tween Jan, Bas­sarath, the then TTCB Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Su­ruj Ra­goonath, and pres­i­dent of the Mon­roe Road Sports Club, Manohar Ram­saran.

More than 3,000 record­ings were found on Jan’s com­pa­ny is­sued phone af­ter he was ter­mi­nat­ed from the SporTT Com­pa­ny in No­vem­ber 2017. Project Barcelona is part of a broad­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to pro­cure­ment and ex­pen­di­ture ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at the SporTT Com­pa­ny which saw the ter­mi­na­tion of sev­er­al more em­ploy­ees in Ju­ly 2018.

The first key find­ing re­gard­ing the sus­pi­cious voice record­ings was that Jan “ap­peared to have been at­tempt­ing to in­flu­ence the pro­vi­sion of SporTT fund­ing to TTCB.” How­ev­er, the re­port in­di­cat­ed that for­mer chair­man of the SporTT Com­pa­ny, Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine “was pre­vent­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of fund­ing to TTCB.”

PWC’s re­port not­ed that Jan at­tempt­ed to ap­prove pay­ments to the TTCB by sign­ing ap­proval doc­u­ments “on three (3) sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions” for over quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars—a sum he did not have au­thor­i­ty to ap­prove. How­ev­er, the pay­ments nev­er man­u­fac­tured be­cause it didn’t get the re­quired ap­proval from the then chair­man.

In Oc­to­ber 2017, Jan was ap­point­ed as­sis­tant coach of the T&T Red Force team. Text mes­sages be­tween Jan and Bas­sarath ap­pear to sug­gest it was a re­ward for his ef­forts to in­flu­ence fund­ing to the TTCB. PWC’s re­port not­ed ref­er­ence was made by Bas­sarath to mov­ing Jan “to the front of the line.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Ltd on Tues­day, Bas­sarath de­fend­ed Jan’s se­lec­tion at the time, point­ing to his ex­pe­ri­ence with the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers fran­chise team. He added, “I can­not re­call putting his name in front…All de­ci­sions were made with the ap­proval of the en­tire ex­ec­u­tive. Az­im Bas­sarath can­not make any de­ci­sion with re­spect to any favours or any­thing like that.” Jan’s ap­point­ment as an as­sis­tant coach, while he was still a di­rec­tor at the SporTT Com­pa­ny, could be a con­flict of in­ter­est as well.

He al­so found him­self un­der the mi­cro­scope for leak­ing in­for­ma­tion. The re­port found that he ap­peared “to have shared SporTT doc­u­ments with Bas­sarath which ap­par­ent­ly stat­ed how much was paid by SporTT to TTCB and seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the same.” The unau­tho­rised re­lease of con­fi­den­tial SporTT in­for­ma­tion could be a breach of Sec­tion 99 of the Com­pa­nies Act of 2013, sub­ject to le­gal guid­ance.

Guardian Me­dia Ltd tried sev­er­al times reach­ing out to Jan for com­ment. He did not re­spond to our calls or text mes­sages. How­ev­er, Bas­sarath ap­peared to triv­i­alise the is­sue, say­ing, “The on­ly in­for­ma­tion I know Mr Jan shared with me, and I think he sent it via What­sApp, was the al­lo­ca­tion that was giv­en to TTCB and oth­er sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions…If pub­lic fund­ing is giv­en to dif­fer­ent sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, I don’t think that is con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion… That is sup­posed to be for pub­lic in­for­ma­tion or pub­lic con­sump­tion.”

A PWC of­fi­cial con­firmed the au­then­tic­i­ty of the re­port we ob­tained. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al -Rawi did not con­firm nor de­ny these re­ports as he would not com­ment on mat­ters cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts.

The news comes one week be­fore the TTCB’s elec­tions, which are due to take place on Jan­u­ary 16.

The T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) claimed vic­to­ry in the courts last month af­ter a chal­lenge from a group that in­clud­ed Ram­nar­ine and Dar­ren Gan­ga. The court ruled that out­go­ing mem­bers had the right to vote.

The elec­tion was sched­uled to take place Oc­to­ber 22, 2016, but had been de­ferred by con­sent of the par­ties pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the pro­ceed­in­gs.