The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) says a doc­u­ment cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia that claims to be min­utes from a Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing held on Feb­ru­ary 5, 2024, is fake.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, TU­CO dis­missed the doc­u­ment as “false” and warned the pub­lic to dis­re­gard it en­tire­ly, in­sist­ing it does not re­flect any of­fi­cial pro­ceed­ings of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“TU­CO un­equiv­o­cal­ly de­nies the au­then­tic­i­ty of this doc­u­ment and states cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that it is false,” the or­gan­i­sa­tion said.

“The con­tents there­in do not re­flect the pro­ceed­ings of any Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing held on the said date or any oth­er.”

The state­ment came days af­ter vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian and for­mer TU­CO ex­ec­u­tive Er­rol “Bal­ly” Bal­lan­tyne raised new al­le­ga­tions re­gard­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s fi­nan­cial prac­tices.

Ear­li­er this week, Bal­lan­tyne is­sued an open let­ter to TU­CO pres­i­dent Ains­ley King, de­mand­ing clar­i­ty on ex­plo­sive claims that mem­bers of the gen­er­al coun­cil were each paid $100,000 to not par­tic­i­pate in the 2025 Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion.

Bal­lan­tyne said he first wrote to gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shirlane Hen­drick­son on May 1 and again on May 16, seek­ing con­fir­ma­tion and the names of re­cip­i­ents. To date, he said, there has been no of­fi­cial re­ply.
He lat­er raised the is­sue di­rect­ly at a TU­CO East zon­al meet­ing, where trea­sur­er Judy Beni­court re­port­ed­ly told him she was “not in a po­si­tion to di­vulge that in­for­ma­tion.”

In his let­ter, Bal­lan­tyne de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “deeply trou­bling,” point­ing out that if true, the ac­tion would be un­jus­ti­fi­able and a be­tray­al of TU­CO’s mem­ber­ship and the pub­lic trust.

How­ev­er, TU­CO is­sued a strong­ly word­ed press re­lease deny­ing the ac­cu­sa­tions and call­ing them base­less, defam­a­to­ry, and dam­ag­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its lead­er­ship.

“The gen­er­al coun­cil has not en­gaged in any such con­duct,” the re­lease stat­ed.
“These claims are ground­ed pure­ly in ru­mour and spec­u­la­tion and lack any fac­tu­al ba­sis.”

TU­CO ex­plained that there was an es­tab­lished pol­i­cy, pre­dat­ing the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive, where mem­bers were com­pen­sat­ed for their ex­ten­sive work dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. How­ev­er, it said there was nev­er any arrange­ment re­sem­bling the one de­scribed by Bal­lan­tyne.