Renu­ka Singh

The mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Life Sport pro­gramme has been sus­pend­ed pend­ing the out­come of the au­dit by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai.The Sun­day Guardian learned that the pro­gramme has been placed in sus­pen­sion mode as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Howai's team pro­gress­es to the sec­ond stage: in­ter­view­ing peo­ple af­fil­i­at­ed with the pro­gramme.

The pro­gramme, ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment Web site, was the brain­child of Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts and was seen as a way to use sports to help youths be­tween 18 and 25 who live in at-risk com­mu­ni­ties.The fall out from the sus­pen­sion and in­ves­ti­ga­tion means no mon­ey can be paid out to those par­tic­i­pants un­til af­ter the au­dit is com­plet­ed. At its in­cep­tion, the prgramme catered for 60 par­tic­i­pants in each of the 33 ar­eas ear­marked for the pro­gramme. Each par­tic­i­pant re­ceived a stipend of $1,500 per month.

When the pro­gramme first re­ceived gov­ern­ment ap­proval in 2012, it was al­lo­cat­ed $6.6 mil­lion which was in­creased by $23 mil­lion one year lat­er.By 2014, the pro­gramme al­lo­ca­tion had shot up to over $113 mil­lion.The Sun­day Guardian has learned that the Life Sport pro­gramme has been au­dit­ed twice be­fore this most re­cent au­dit or­dered by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, but was nev­er sus­pend­ed since its in­cep­tion back in 2012.

The con­tro­ver­sial pro­gramme has al­ready been in­ves­ti­gat­ed twice by the same Cen­tral Au­dit Unit (CAU), the fi­nan­cial in­ves­tiga­tive unit un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance which is un­der­tak­ing this third au­dit.For­mer Life Sport di­rec­tor Hen­ry Charles, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, re­vealed that he left back in Feb­ru­ary be­cause of the "in­con­sis­ten­cies" dur­ing his short tenure."I just de­cid­ed to call it quits," Charles said.

When pressed fur­ther, Charles said he was "not sur­prised" by what has sur­faced with re­gards to im­prop­er spend­ing un­der the pro­gramme."I was there for a year, and I am in no way sur­prised by what I am see­ing now."Charles said dur­ing that one-year stint, he met with CAU in­ves­ti­ga­tors twice and was will­ing to meet with them again in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate this third au­dit."I spoke with them be­fore, gave them all the in­for­ma­tion I had dur­ing the first two au­dits," he said.

But even with Charles' rev­e­la­tions, checks by the Sun­day Guardian show, the pro­gramme con­tin­ued run­ning be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter those au­dits.The Sun­day Guardian texted the Prime Min­is­ter to as­cer­tain whether she was aware of the two pre­vi­ous au­dits but re­ceived no re­sponse. Howai and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith were al­so texted and e-mailed with the new in­for­ma­tion, but gave no re­sponse.

Howai team combs through books,doc­u­ments from the pro­gramme

In keep­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar's call last week Sat­ur­day for a fi­nan­cial au­dit of the pro­gramme, Howai yes­ter­day said his min­istry had al­ready com­man­deered most of the doc­u­ments and fi­nan­cial books re­lat­ing to the pro­gramme.In re­sponse to an e-mail ear­li­er yes­ter­day, Howai said that the fi­nan­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tors at his min­istry have al­ready gath­ered rel­e­vant doc­u­ments and fi­nan­cial books from the Min­istry of Sport and have be­gun comb­ing through them.

"The au­dit has just com­menced, and the of­fi­cers are still in the process of col­lect­ing in­for­ma­tion." The sec­ond phase of the au­dit process, the in­ter­views, are ex­pect­ed to start with­in the next week, the Sun­day Guardian learned.Howai con­firmed that "oth­er var­i­ous of­fi­cers and par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme" will be in­ter­viewed "af­ter they (of­fi­cers) have com­plet­ed their ini­tial da­ta col­lec­tion."

Chief among the in­ter­vie­wees, the Sun­day Guardian learned, is Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Sport, Ash­win Creed, who has on­ly just re­turned to T&T af­ter a pro­longed ab­sence.Though Creed did not re­spond to sev­er­al calls and texts to his mo­bile phone, the Sun­day Guardian has learned that he is ex­pect­ed to be in­ter­viewed next week.

The Sun­day Guardian learned that Creed, as per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, is al­so the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer for the min­istry and as such has be­come cen­tral to un­rav­el­ling the dis­burse­ment of mil­lions of dol­lars by the Life Sport Pro­gramme, which ini­tial­ly fell un­der the re­mit of the Min­istry of Sport.The pro­gramme has since been re­al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Last Sat­ur­day, at the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship fourth an­niver­sary ral­ly, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Life Sport Pro­gramme would be hand­ed over to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, but Grif­fith will not be able to take over the pro­gramme un­til Howai's au­dit is com­plet­ed.Grif­fith had orig­i­nal­ly an­nounced that he planned to utilise mil­i­tary per­son­nel to su­per­vise the pro­gramme to en­sure any crim­i­nal el­e­ment is root­ed out, but all plans are cur­rent­ly on hold.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Wednes­day, Grif­fith said that "raw da­ta" gath­ered so far, how­ev­er, showed that "in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics" were used to bul­ly the peo­ple in­volved in the pro­gramme."But fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion is need­ed to con­firm that," Grif­fith said."The Life Sport Pro­gramme is an ide­al tool to reach the at-risk youths, and it will not and should not be sub­ject­ed to any crim­i­nal act," he said.

Creed back home

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary to the Prime Min­is­ter and head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, Reynold Coop­er, yes­ter­day con­firmed that Creed was back in the coun­try.In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Coop­er said that Creed was on "va­ca­tion leave.""He is al­lowed 35 work­ing days, and he was on va­ca­tion leave," Coop­er said.

Just last week, how­ev­er, Coop­er gave a dif­fer­ent rea­son for Creed's pro­longed ab­sence. In that re­port, Coop­er was quot­ed as say­ing that Creed sought emer­gency leave from April 14 to 22. Coop­er said then that Creed spoke to him on the phone, and he did not get the im­pres­sion Creed was "flee­ing for his life." Coop­er ad­mit­ted that Creed gave no rea­son for seek­ing the emer­gency leave.

Ac­cord­ing to that re­port, Coop­er said that Creed had told him his leave was due to "fam­i­ly busi­ness," then Creed re­turned to T&T and lat­er went to Chi­na from April 28 to 30, on of­fi­cial busi­ness, to sign a mem­o­ran­dum of agree­ment on coach­ing and oth­er as­sis­tance T&T was sourc­ing from Chi­na. He then took or­di­nary va­ca­tion leave from May 15 to 23.

Last month, speak­ing at a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed that one per­ma­nent sec­re­tary was forced to flee the coun­try be­cause of threats from crim­i­nals. While he did not call any names dur­ing his ad­dress, the de­tails of the Life Sport Pro­gramme, in­clud­ing Creeds' hasty de­par­ture and lengthy ab­sence, were soon cir­cu­lat­ing in the pub­lic do­main.