The T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion's Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, which in­cludes Ian Cole (chair­man), Jacque­line Corbin (sec­re­tary), Janelle Ce­les­tine (trea­sur­er), Jeff Chan­dler and Bet­ty Alexan­der, has been tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of track­ing down in­voic­es and doc­u­ments to ver­i­fy the pur­chase of equip­ment for the na­tion­al sprint team.

The equip­ment was sched­uled to be used at the last two UCI Cy­cling World Cups in Hong Kong and New Zealand in re­cent weeks, as well as at an­oth­er World Cup event sched­uled for Cana­da at the end of De­cem­ber and ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

These doc­u­ments, it is be­lieved, are crit­i­cal to the com­ple­tion of the fed­er­a­tion's au­dit­ed ac­counts for the pe­ri­od Ju­ly-Sep­tem­ber 2019, which was pre­sent­ed un­fin­ished at a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing on Sat­ur­day at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Cou­va. Due to the in­abil­i­ty of the com­mit­tee mem­bers to pro­vide an­swers on the fed­er­a­tion's fi­nan­cial af­fairs, all con­cerns were re­ferred to the next coun­cil meet­ing at a date and time to be de­ter­mined. In the in­com­plete au­dit re­port, it was stat­ed that "The ac­coun­tant has all doc­u­ments from the TTCF but can­not fi­nalise un­til we re­ceive the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments for pay­ments on Gen­er­al Ledger from SporTT. There­fore, there will be no ac­counts pre­sent­ed at the AGM."

Guardian Me­dia Sports was re­li­ably in­formed on Mon­day that the fed­er­a­tion re­ceived $1 mil­lion from the Sport and Cul­ture Fund, which is man­aged by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, ear­li­er this month to ac­quire equip­ment for the mem­bers of the na­tion­al sprint team, as well as Olympic-bound Te­niel Camp­bell. How­ev­er, the fed­er­a­tion is yet to re­ceive a pa­per trail for an es­ti­mat­ed $361,000 that was spent on the pur­chase of Mav­ic Wheels and Re­imb for the sprint team and over­weight charges for the team, ex­pen­di­ture which no mem­ber of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee is aware of.

The re­port al­so showed that a visa pay­ment of $164,287 and a bank draft of $202,869.25 was made to the per­son­al ac­count of a top-rank­ing cy­cling stake­hold­er.

Ac­cord­ing to the source, the fed­er­a­tion has four sig­na­to­ries, the pres­i­dent, vice-pres­i­dent of Fi­nance, the trea­sur­er and the gen­er­al sec­re­tary, so ques­tions are be­ing raised about how those trans­ac­tions could be made with­out these in­di­vid­u­als be­ing in­volved.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the fed­er­a­tion is al­so re­im­burs­ing Desmond Roberts, of the Per­fec­tion Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (PSL) Cy­cling Club, $28,505.25 for ex­pen­di­ture he in­curred dur­ing na­tion­al du­ty a year ago.

Mean­while, Jan­u­ary 7, 2020, was set as the date to elect a new pres­i­dent to re­place Lar­ry Ro­many, who re­signed last week. The new pres­i­dent is to be cho­sen via a by-elec­tion since Ro­many's res­ig­na­tion comes be­fore the 42 months of the ex­ec­u­tive ex­pire dur­ing a term of of­fice, as man­dat­ed in the sport's con­sti­tu­tion.