For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has wel­comed yes­ter­day’s High Court rul­ing, which found that for­mer Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT) CEO and board mem­bers breached their fidu­cia­ry du­ties in ap­prov­ing a $34 mil­lion con­tract for the con­tro­ver­sial and now-de­funct Life Sport pro­gramme.

The court ruled that the for­mer board mem­bers could not be treat­ed as mere “rub­ber stamps” and had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ex­er­cise over­sight and due dili­gence. The rul­ing has reignit­ed pub­lic calls for re­form in the ap­point­ment of State board mem­bers and greater ac­count­abil­i­ty in pub­lic of­fice.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Grif­fith said the rul­ing vin­di­cates his de­ci­sion, while in of­fice, to raise the alarm about fi­nan­cial ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the pro­gramme, even at the risk of po­lit­i­cal fall­out.

“This one struck straight home be­cause I was the min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty that went up against my own gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“All of this in­for­ma­tion and ev­i­dence came to me and it was damn­ing.”

Grif­fith said al­though he faced pub­lic crit­i­cism from some mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Cab­i­net at the time, he had passed the ev­i­dence to the po­lice and called for the pro­gramme to be shut down. He said Life Sport was rid­dled with ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and be­came a source of fund­ing for crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“We are speak­ing about hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars go­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion, caus­ing crim­i­nals to have ac­cess to ex­tra funds,” he said.

“It was mind-bog­gling that per­sons who held po­si­tions on a state board of di­rec­tors could claim they didn’t know what was go­ing on. That is ei­ther in­com­pe­tence at the high­est lev­el or a de­ci­sion to turn a blind eye.”

Grif­fith cred­it­ed then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for even­tu­al­ly trans­fer­ring the Life Sport pro­gramme to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, but said by the time it came un­der his re­mit, “it was too far gone to bring back”.

He main­tained that mem­bers of State boards must be held re­spon­si­ble for the de­ci­sions they ap­prove and called for more strin­gent screen­ing of board ap­pointees.

“You can­not be on a board, col­lect a five-fig­ure salary every month and then when things go wrong, try to play shag­gy and say ‘it wasn’t me’,” he said.

“With that po­si­tion must come re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. And with that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, there must be con­se­quences.”

Grif­fith said state boards should in­clude safe­guards such as per­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing, ac­count­abil­i­ty sys­tems, and even poly­graph test­ing to en­sure that ap­pointees are qual­i­fied and act­ing in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

“Ste­vie Won­der and Ray Charles would have known how Life Sport was lit­tered with ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, if not crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties,” he said.

“For you to be on a board and not know about it, and I had to go against my own gov­ern­ment to ex­pose it, it says a lot about the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of those per­sons who were ap­point­ed.”

Yes­ter­day’s rul­ing sets a prece­dent that board mem­bers can be held ac­count­able even af­ter they leave of­fice, some­thing Grif­fith says should ap­ply across the pub­lic sec­tor to re­duce in­com­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion.

“It shows the im­por­tance of putting the right per­sons in the right places. If we do that, it will min­imise in­com­pe­tence and re­move a mas­sive chunk of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty from the state,” he said.

Ef­forts to con­tact Anil Roberts, who was the sports min­is­ter un­der whose watch the pro­gramme fell and who con­cep­tu­alised the pro­gramme, were un­suc­cess­ful as he did not re­spond to calls or What­sApp mes­sages.