The T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), as promised, has ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion against its for­mer ac­count ex­ec­u­tive, Ali­cia David-Jones, con­cern­ing the al­leged mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of up to $500,000 in funds.

Guardian Me­dia Sport con­firmed the le­gal ac­tion through a re­sponse to a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quest from the Ju­di­cia­ry, dat­ed Au­gust 12.

The board’s at­tor­neys, Hen­ry Chase and Navin­da Ram­nanan, an­nounced at a press con­fer­ence in June the board’s in­ten­tion to file civ­il pro­ceed­ings against the for­mer TTCB em­ploy­ee to re­cov­er the al­leged miss­ing funds.

There is al­so an on­go­ing Po­lice Ser­vice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.

As first re­port­ed by the Trinidad Guardian in No­vem­ber 2023, a TTCB au­dit by for­mer Trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo found that up to half a mil­lion dol­lars in fund­ing was miss­ing.

Chaitoo, a foren­sic ac­coun­tant, re­port­ed in the AGM that he was un­able to ver­i­fy how $132,313 of TTCB funds up to Ju­ly 31, 2023—orig­i­nal­ly al­lo­cat­ed for ad­min­is­tra­tion, clean­ing, match fees, train­ing and de­vel­op­ment, trav­el­ling, as well as of­fice and gen­er­al ex­pens­es—had been spent.

The trea­sur­er said he be­gan to check the fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments for pre­vi­ous years and re­alised that more than $500,000 was un­ac­count­ed for.

Chaitoo made a re­port to the TTPS

David-Jones, who is be­ing sued, wrote a res­ig­na­tion let­ter, ad­mit­ting to tak­ing some of the funds.

How­ev­er, Guardian Sport un­der­stands that peo­ple close to Jones are sug­gest­ing she was pres­sured in­to pen­ning the let­ter.

Jones de­clined to com­ment, cit­ing ad­vice from her at­tor­neys.

A Guardian Me­dia Sport in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed in June that TTCB pres­i­dent Bas­sarath wrote to the TTPS to ask it to stop its fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the TTCB’s miss­ing funds.

“I, AZ­IM BAS­SARATH, have been the pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), sit­u­at­ed at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, since 2009. This state­ment is in re­sponse to a vis­it from Sar­real Ba­choo, De­tec­tive In­spec­tor of Po­lice of the Fraud Squad, on Wednes­day, March 12, 2025, as well as to a let­ter (dat­ed 10th March 2025) that was re­ceived from the Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Fraud Squad on 12th March 2025.

“Af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, a de­ci­sion was tak­en by the TTCB Ex­ec­u­tive not to pur­sue any ac­tion at this time in the crim­i­nal are­na in­volv­ing the re­port lodged with the po­lice by for­mer TTCB trea­sur­er Chaitoo. I re­spect­ful­ly re­quest no fur­ther ac­tion at this time by the po­lice in the present mat­ter, and I wish to thank you for your co­op­er­a­tion and cour­tesy ex­tend­ed,” the let­ter signed by Az­im Bas­sarath stat­ed.

Five months be­fore Bas­sarath penned the let­ter, Chaitoo lost an ap­peal fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against him.

The board re­moved him from the post, ac­cus­ing him of fail­ing to fol­low prop­er pro­ce­dure by re­port­ing the mat­ter to the po­lice with­out board ap­proval.

The crick­et board passed a spe­cial mo­tion to bar Chaitoo (and any oth­er per­son who, hence­forth, lost a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion) for ten years from seek­ing mem­ber­ship in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In 2018, a Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny au­dit al­leged that the TTCB spent mil­lions of NGC-spon­sored dol­lars with­out prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Be­tween 2014 and 2016, NGC spon­sored ap­prox­i­mate­ly $12.46 mil­lion. The au­dit re­port al­leged that at least 24% of funds pro­vid­ed by NGC were not spent in align­ment with a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing signed be­tween both par­ties in De­cem­ber 2013.

The au­dit al­leged that $25,000 was over­paid in 2014, and funds un­der­utilised were uni­lat­er­al­ly re­al­lo­cat­ed by the TTCB. They al­leged­ly amount­ed to $1.46 mil­lion in 2014, $724,000 in 2015, and $797,000 in 2016.

Last week, Bas­sarath was reap­point­ed un­op­posed as the TTCB pres­i­dent.

He has served in the po­si­tion since 2009.