Over the past few days, Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed (GML) has pub­lished sev­er­al ar­ti­cles in its Guardian news­pa­per and has car­ried sev­er­al news sto­ries on its tele­vi­sion sta­tion, CNC3, all cre­at­ed by Mr Mark Bas­sant, and in the course of which al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing have been lev­elled against me in con­nec­tion with the con­struc­tion of the TTFA’s ‘Home of Foot­ball’ dur­ing my tenure as TTFA pres­i­dent. All of the al­le­ga­tions made against me are false.

Pri­or to pub­lish­ing these al­le­ga­tions, Mr Bas­sant, no doubt in an at­tempt to im­mu­nize him­self and GML from li­a­bil­i­ty for their fal­si­ty, am­bushed me on a golf course and in­un­dat­ed me with a se­ries of ques­tions and state­ments which I could not rea­son­ably be ex­pect­ed prop­er­ly to an­swer in the course of his am­bush. I give the un­qual­i­fied as­sur­ance that there are com­plete an­swers to all of Mr Bas­sant’s al­le­ga­tions. I have al­so been ad­vised that Mr Bas­sant’s at­tempt to im­mu­nize him­self and GML from li­a­bil­i­ty does not have the pro­phy­lac­tic ef­fect for which he and GML un­doubt­ed­ly wished, and that he and GML are both li­able for the false and defam­a­to­ry al­le­ga­tions con­tained and made in these ar­ti­cles and tele­vi­sion news sto­ries, which they con­tin­ue to pub­lish and to car­ry.

I have en­gaged at­tor­neys-at-law to ex­am­ine and to ad­vise me on the ma­te­r­i­al which I have in my pos­ses­sion and which is oth­er­wise avail­able to me and which lays bare the un­truth, the dis­tor­tions and the false­hoods con­tained in these ar­ti­cles and tele­vi­sion news sto­ries. Once my at­tor­neys-at-law have com­plet­ed their due dili­gence, I will be in­struct­ing the fil­ing of le­gal pro­ceed­ings against GML and Mr Bas­sant for these odi­ous and con­temptible al­le­ga­tions which have caused my fam­i­ly and my­self in­com­pre­hen­si­ble dis­tress.

Fur­ther, af­ter their re­view there­of and to the ex­tent that I am per­mit­ted by my at­tor­neys-at-law to do so, I al­so pro­pose to make pub­licly avail­able the ma­te­r­i­al which I have in my pos­ses­sion and which is oth­er­wise avail­able to me, which will show all of these al­le­ga­tions to be base­less. In the mean­time, I dep­re­cate in the strongest terms pos­si­ble GML’s and Mr Bas­sant’s at­tempts to el­e­vate sen­sa­tion­al­ism and char­ac­ter-as­sas­si­na­tion to the ranks of jour­nal­ism and I await my day in court when I will clear my name and cause GML and Mr Bas­sant to ac­count dear­ly for their li­bel.