Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

A few months af­ter the con­struc­tion of the Home of Foot­ball be­gan in 2018, FI­FA boss Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no was alert­ed by a for­mer T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion boss about al­le­ga­tions of “im­pro­pri­ety, dic­ta­tor­ship and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al ac­tions” on the part of then-pres­i­dent David John-Williams as it re­lat­ed to the Home of Foot­ball project.

But In­fan­ti­no failed to re­spond to the email or even act on the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in it by for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee and showed up for the fa­cil­i­ty’s open­ing in No­vem­ber 2019, just a week be­fore John-Williams was oust­ed as pres­i­dent and re­placed by William Wal­lace’s team.

Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly ob­tained Tim Kee’s email to In­fan­ti­no on Oc­to­ber 16, 2018, from in­ter­na­tion­al in­sid­ers. The email was al­so copied to FI­FA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fat­ma Soura, CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent Vic­tor Mon­ta­galiani and Caribbean Foot­ball Union pres­i­dent Randy Har­ris.

Soura is the of­fi­cial who told the TTFA if it did not with­draw its court mat­ter against FI­FA in the lo­cal courts by Wednes­day this week it would face pos­si­ble sus­pen­sion to­day at FI­FA’s Con­gress.

In his email, Tim Kee, now de­ceased, told In­fan­ti­no, “The pres­i­den­cy of David John-Williams has been plagued with al­le­ga­tions of im­pro­pri­ety, dic­ta­tor­ship and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al ac­tions. Many of these is­sues now form the ba­sis of a High Court ac­tion pur­sued by a mem­ber of the board.”

Tim Kee said he had been asked by TTFA mem­bers, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the pub­lic to break his si­lence on the mat­ter in the in­ter­est of foot­ball. He said while he be­lieved in the prin­ci­ples of the FI­FA Statutes, he felt John-Williams’ “ac­tions could fur­ther harm an al­ready wound­ed as­so­ci­a­tion rather than de­liv­er it from the pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion in which it now finds it­self.”

Tim Kee was not on­ly crit­i­cal about the al­leged trans­gres­sions com­mit­ted by John-Williams but is­sues that cropped up with the Home of Foot­ball con­struc­tion al­most on a week­ly ba­sis. He high­light­ed to In­fan­ti­no that the is­sues re­lat­ed to the project.

“The award of con­tracts, the mon­ey spent thus far on the project, the ques­tion­able pur­chas­ing of ma­te­ri­als for the project un­der­tak­en by the TTFA pres­i­dent and the in­abil­i­ty to pro­duce doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence re; the con­tracts and in­voic­es rel­a­tive to the project,” Tim Kee wrote.

In con­vey­ing his dis­sat­is­fac­tion, Tim Kee used strong lan­guage, stat­ing, “The project has been fraught with con­tro­ver­sy and de­cep­tion from its in­cep­tion. Mr John-Williams’ in­ti­ma­cy with it is there­fore cu­ri­ous and in­vites sus­pi­cion. While all re­quests from the board for dis­clo­sure re­gard­ing the project have been met with out­right re­fusal and dis­play of gym­nas­tics by the pres­i­dent (John-Williams). FI­FA rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mr Veron Mosen­go-Om­ba has giv­en the now con­tro­ver­sial project the ‘green light.’ This sit­u­a­tion begs for in­ter­ven­tion by FI­FA, as one of its agents might be com­pro­mis­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

Tim Kee added, “The gen­e­sis of the woes that are now con­fronting the TTFA and the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball, in par­tic­u­lar, is Mr David John William’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the Home of Foot­ball project. His fix­a­tion on this project has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the op­er­a­tions of the TTFA and placed the or­gan­i­sa­tion in the worst po­si­tion it has ever been. The TTFA has been in ‘cri­sis’ mode since Mr Williams as­sumed the pres­i­den­cy.”

Tim-Kee added that John-Williams han­dling of TTFA af­fairs were al­so af­fect­ing na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes at every lev­el.

“Mr Williams’ sur­vival is due pri­mar­i­ly to his ma­nip­u­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion, dis­en­fran­chis­ing board mem­bers and pre­vail­ing by the en­su­ing slim ma­jor­i­ty de­rived from such ac­tion. Akin to all dic­ta­tor­ships, a hand­ful of peo­ple are hold­ing a whole na­tion to ran­som. In this par­tic­u­lar in­stance, the en­tire Caribbean, as we have long been the lead­ing foot­ball coun­try that stood as a bea­con of hope in the re­gion.”

In clos­ing, Tim Kee ap­pealed for ac­tion from In­fan­ti­no.

“On be­half of the con­cerned cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go and my­self, we are reach­ing out in our mo­ment of des­per­a­tion to you Sir, as Pres­i­dent of the gov­ern­ing body, to put an end to this trav­es­ty and tyran­ny of David John Williams.”

His last line be­fore his sign off read, “For the game for the world!”

Sources fa­mil­iar with the con­tents of the email told Guardian Me­dia that In­fan­ti­no nev­er re­spond­ed to Tim Kee’s email de­spite the alarm­ing con­cerns raised in his let­ter.

On­ly on Mon­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice White-col­lar Di­vi­sion opened a crim­i­nal probe in­to the T&TFA, John-Williams and the mat­ters sur­round­ing the Home of Foot­ball. This came af­ter a Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ac­tiv­i­ties of the T&TFA un­der John-Williams un­cov­ered a Pana­man­ian bank ac­count and ques­tion­able busi­ness trans­ac­tions sur­round­ing the project.