Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

For­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent David John-Williams yes­ter­day re­leased doc­u­ments show­ing FI­FA fund­ing that were dis­bursed for the Home of Foot­ball project but has still failed to an­swer why he did not have fund­ing in ear­ly 2018 to clear ship­ping costs of US$50,000 which arose then or who the main con­trac­tor on the project was.

John-Williams sent the doc­u­ments on the FI­FA dis­burse­ments, which be­gan in 2017 and con­tin­ued in 2018 for the project, in a me­dia re­lease as he tried to de­fend his de­ci­sion not to pay the late ship­ping fees that ac­crued in the first quar­ter of 2018, as raised in the CNC3 doc­u­men­tary TTFA’s Se­cret Pana­ma Trails last week.

In the doc­u­men­tary, it was re­vealed that monies for the FI­FA For­ward 1.0 Pro­gramme at that time was dis­bursed to the Home of Foot­ball in tranch­es start­ing in 2017.

John-Williams con­test­ed the Ju­ly 2017 date in the doc­u­men­tary, since he not­ed that FI­FA on­ly dis­bursed funds in Sep­tem­ber 2017 af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment had grant­ed the TTFA the lease to State lands in ear­ly Au­gust 2017, as the doc­u­ment he re­leased showed.

How­ev­er, the funds for the Home of Foot­ball did start to flow in No­vem­ber 2017 with FI­FA’s first tranche of US$900,000 - a point the doc­u­men­tary made clear in in­di­cat­ing the monies came in tranch­es start­ing in 2017.

Part of the FIFA document which former TTFA president David John-Williams sent in a press release yesterday showing payments TTFA received from FIFA form 2017.

In FI­FA’s For­ward Project ap­pli­ca­tion re­leased by John-Williams, the sec­ond in­stal­ment of US$675,000 came up­on the re­ceipt of a writ­ten re­port by the con­tract­ing com­pa­ny con­firm­ing com­ple­tion of 70 per cent of the work.

The third in­stal­ment of US$450,000 came fol­low­ing re­ceipt of a writ­ten re­port by the con­tract­ing com­pa­ny con­firm­ing com­ple­tion of 80 per cent of the work and the fourth in­stal­ment of US$225,000 one month af­ter com­ple­tion and the in­stal­la­tion and fol­low­ing re­ceipt of a han­dover doc­u­ment signed be­tween the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny and the TTFA with­out reser­va­tions.

With this in­for­ma­tion in ear­ly 2018, John-Williams trav­elled to Pana­ma in Jan­u­ary 2018 and sub­mit­ted in­voic­es to FI­FA from ECOTEC in Feb­ru­ary 2018, as the doc­u­men­tary high­light­ed.

ECOTEC com­mer­cial di­rec­tor Juan Al­vara­do con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the com­pa­ny was paid US$282,653.85 back then.

Dur­ing the months of Feb­ru­ary, March and April in 2018, ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al in­voic­es that Guardian Me­dia ob­tained, con­tain­ers were brought in­to T&T from Pana­ma for the Home of Foot­ball project.

Ship­ping sources said John-Williams had in­di­cat­ed to them at that time that he could not pay the costs since he did not have any US cur­ren­cy. How­ev­er, John-Williams, by his own vo­li­tion, did in­di­cate the For­ward Fund­ing project mon­ey had start­ed in No­vem­ber 2017.

In the doc­u­ment re­leased by John-Williams yes­ter­day, he spoke about a con­tract­ing com­pa­ny specif­i­cal­ly be­ing paid monies once they com­plet­ed the work at par­tic­u­lar phas­es.

What re­mained sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­clear, as high­light­ed in the doc­u­men­tary, is ex­act­ly who was the main con­trac­tor on the project, how they were paid and when were they paid for their con­trac­tu­al com­mit­ments at the Home of Foot­ball. The Pana­man­ian ac­count with links to John-Williams that foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors un­cov­ered al­so re­mains a mys­tery and was not ad­dressed by John-Williams’ re­lease?

The FIFA document which former TTFA president David John-Williams sent with a press release yesterday to show payments the TTFA received from FIFA from 2017.

And con­trary to arrange­ments stip­u­lat­ed by FI­FA, John-Williams agreed to pay the Pana­man­ian com­pa­ny what was owed to them pri­or to the ma­te­r­i­al be­ing re­leased while lo­cal cred­i­tors, in­clud­ing the ship­ping com­pa­ny who han­dled all the con­tain­ers, are still un­paid al­most two and a half years lat­er.

In the re­lease, John-Williams al­so in­di­cat­ed that as a ‘state­ment of fact,’ the TTFA did not re­ceive op­er­a­tional costs of US$1.25 mil­lion - which is an an­nu­al sub­ven­tion giv­en to as­so­ci­a­tions, but in fact, re­ceived some US$500,000.

How­ev­er, at least two TTFA sources dis­pelled this, stat­ing that as far as they knew, the TTFA did re­ceive its op­er­a­tional costs of US$1.2m in 2017, with the US$500,000 in Jan­u­ary and US$700,000 in Ju­ly of 2017.