ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent, Ricky Sker­ritt, said there was nev­er any in­ten­tion of the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body to “hide” the con­tents of a re­cent au­dit re­port which had un­cov­ered “il­lus­tra­tions of ques­tion­able ex­ec­u­tive stan­dards and prac­tices”.

In a state­ment late Sun­day, Sker­ritt point­ed out that the au­dit com­mis­sioned by his ad­min­is­tra­tion and car­ried out by ac­count­ing and man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm, Pan­nell Kerr Fos­ter (PKF), was for in­ter­nal con­sid­er­a­tion on­ly and thought had not been giv­en to re­leas­ing it pub­licly.

He was speak­ing in the wake of a leak of the re­port, which saw in­ter­na­tion­al broad­cast­er and leg­endary for­mer West In­dies fast bowler, Michael Hold­ing, re­veal­ing sec­tions of the doc­u­ment on a Youtube crick­et show called “Mikey – Hold­ing Noth­ing Back” host­ed by Asif Khan.

Telling the host that he had ob­tained a copy of the au­dit re­port, Hold­ing said CWI had been in re­ceipt of the au­dit for some time but had cho­sen not to re­lease it “for what rea­son I don’t know”.

Sker­ritt, who came to of­fice last year March af­ter un­seat­ing three-term in­cum­bent Ja­maican Dave Cameron, said se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion would now have to be giv­en to re­leas­ing the re­port es­pe­cial­ly since it had now been made pub­lic.

“Since the adop­tion of the PKF re­port six months ago, nu­mer­ous ref­er­ences to the ex­is­tence of the re­port have been made in me­dia state­ments and in­ter­views by the CWI CEO (John­ny Grave), vice pres­i­dent (Dy Kishore Shal­low), and my­self,” Sker­ritt said.

“I can con­fi­dent­ly as­sure you that at no time was there any de­ci­sion tak­en by the Board or any­one as­so­ci­at­ed with CWI to ‘hide’, ‘con­ceal’, ‘with­hold’ or ‘hold-back’ the PKF re­port.

“How­ev­er, in light of an ap­par­ent re­cent ac­cess to some of its con­tents by the me­dia, the CWI Board will now have to con­tem­plate whether it may be ap­pro­pri­ate at this time for the re­port to be shared pub­licly.”

In as­sum­ing of­fice in April last year, Sker­ritt said the com­mis­sion of the au­dit was one of three im­me­di­ate ac­tions tak­en, in keep­ing with his cam­paign promise to re­form the gov­er­nance struc­ture and en­hance fi­nan­cial trans­paren­cy.

As such, PKF was “was en­gaged for a six-month pe­ri­od to con­duct a busi­ness sit­u­a­tion as­sess­ment and re­view of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s fi­nan­cial man­age­ment sys­tems, and to pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions for ad­dress­ing any short­com­ings”.

“In car­ry­ing out its as­sess­ments PKF un­cov­ered some il­lus­tra­tions of ques­tion­able ex­ec­u­tive stan­dards and prac­tices,” Sker­ritt said.

“It ver­i­fied and em­pha­sized the need for dras­tic op­er­a­tional re­or­gan­i­sa­tion and re­align­ment, with an ur­gent need for im­proved risk as­sess­ment and cash flow man­age­ment.

“The PKF con­sul­tants ac­cord­ing­ly pre­sent­ed their re­port in per­son to the CWI Board of Di­rec­tors in De­cem­ber; and their 28mrec­om­men­da­tions were unan­i­mous­ly adopt­ed.

“Pub­lish­ing the doc­u­ment was nev­er con­sid­ered by the Board, as the re­port is an in­ter­nal re­port.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sker­ritt, CWI had moved “as swift­ly as we are able” to im­ple­ment sev­er­al of the re­port’s rec­om­men­da­tions, point­ing out that some had al­ready been made op­er­a­tional in CWI’s dai­ly func­tion­ing.

List­ing a num­ber of the changes, the for­mer St Kitts and Nevis cab­i­net min­is­ter said the board had act­ed to en­sure time­li­ness in ac­count­ing, strength­ened in­ter­nal con­trols, mod­i­fied man­age­ment prac­tices to en­sure best prac­tice and fur­ther em­pow­ered the CEO and man­age­ment team while re­in­forc­ing the non-ex­ec­u­tive role of the pres­i­dent.

Im­por­tant­ly, Sker­ritt said CWI had al­so in­sti­tut­ed the time­ly re­port­ing to the board of the “ac­cu­rate fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion”.

Sker­ritt said it was crit­i­cal the board con­tin­ued its man­date of gov­er­nance re­form while al­so learn­ing from the mis­takes of the past.

“I want to as­sure all stake­hold­ers of West In­dies crick­et that whether the PKF re­port is made pub­lic or not, CWI will not be dis­tract­ed from cor­rect­ing, and learn­ing from, any iden­ti­fi­able mis­steps or short­com­ings of the past,” he stressed.

“I am de­ter­mined as the pres­i­dent of this Board, to en­sure that CWI con­ducts its busi­ness with in­tegri­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy and with­out fear or fa­vor, af­fec­tion or ill-will."

(CMC)