The Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board, Az­im Bas­sarath, at­tempt­ed to in­flu­ence the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a fraud re­port sub­mit­ted by TTCB whistle­blow­er and ac­coun­tant Kiswah Chaitoo.

Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk can re­veal that the Crick­et West In­dies Vice Pres­i­dent has asked the TTPS to stop its fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the TTCB.

Let­ter to TTPS to stop in­ves­ti­ga­tion

“I, AZ­IM BAS­SARATH, am the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB), sit­u­at­ed at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, since 2009. This state­ment is in re­sponse to a vis­it from Sar­real Ba­choo, De­tec­tive In­spec­tor of Po­lice of the Fraud Squad, on Wednes­day, March 12, 2025, as well as to a let­ter (dat­ed 10th March 2025) that was re­ceived from the Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Fraud Squad on 12th March 2025.

“Af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, a de­ci­sion was tak­en by the TTCB Ex­ec­u­tive not to pur­sue any ac­tion at this time in the crim­i­nal are­na, in­volv­ing the re­port lodged with the po­lice by for­mer TTCB trea­sur­er Chaitoo. I re­spect­ful­ly re­quest no fur­ther ac­tion at this time by the po­lice in the present mat­ter, and I wish to thank you for your co­op­er­a­tion and cour­tesy ex­tend­ed,” signed Az­im Bas­sarath.

Bas­sarath’s let­ter came five months af­ter for­mer TTCB Trea­sur­er Chaitoo lost his ap­peal fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against him.

Chaitoo, a char­tered ac­coun­tant, re­port­ed to po­lice in late 2023 that $500,000 was miss­ing from the TTCB’s ac­counts.

The TTCB al­so passed a spe­cial mo­tion to bar Chaitoo (and any oth­er per­son who, hence­forth, lost a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion) for ten years from seek­ing mem­ber­ship in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In seek­ing to con­vince the TTPS that the TTCB had suf­fi­cient­ly han­dled the mat­ter, Bas­sarath re­ferred to Chaitoo in his let­ter to the po­lice.

De­spite ac­knowl­edg­ing that Chaitoo made a po­lice re­port, he sug­gest­ed to po­lice that the whistle­blow­er was re­spon­si­ble for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and any re­lat­ed or­deal.

“Sub­se­quent­ly, at an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing of the TTCB held on Mon­day, March 17, 2025, I wish to in­form you of the fol­low­ing:

Kiswah Chaitoo is no longer a mem­ber of the TTCB Ex­ec­u­tive or the TTCB Board, hav­ing been ex­pelled af­ter a vote of no con­fi­dence was moved against him in Feb­ru­ary 2024.

Mr Chaitoo act­ed on his own in mak­ing a po­lice re­port with­out the au­tho­ri­sa­tion of the TTCB or the pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Bas­sarath’s let­ter stat­ed.

Bas­sarath’s re­sponse

“The Chaitoo re­port was not au­tho­rised by the board. Mr Chaitoo was act­ing on a frol­ic of his own, and as a re­sult, the board is un­aware of the full par­tic­u­lars and con­tents of said re­port and will is­sue com­ment with reser­va­tion un­til the re­port is dis­closed to us.

“The Board held the view that it was pru­dent to pur­sue civ­il pro­ceed­ings against the for­mer em­ploy­ee since re­cov­ery of the em­bez­zled funds is more aligned with the statu­to­ry du­ty of the board to pro­mote the wel­fare of crick­et.

“Pur­su­ing crim­i­nal ac­tion against the for­mer em­ploy­ee with a view to pun­ish­ment for wrong­do­ing is not the fo­cus and pri­or­i­ty of the board at this time.”

TTCB mem­bers will­ing to co­op­er­ate with the TTPS

Bas­sarath’s let­ter to the TTPS was pro­vid­ed by a cou­ple of ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the TTCB on the con­di­tion that they re­main anony­mous. They want­ed it to be known that ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers were among this re­porter’s sources be­cause they were will­ing to co­op­er­ate with the po­lice.

Last week, the board, in an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty, vot­ed to give in­creased dis­ci­pli­nary pow­ers to the ex­ec­u­tive.

Some board mem­bers com­plained that the changes were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. The changes left the ex­ec­u­tives ac­count­able on­ly to them­selves.

One of the changes was that board mem­bers were not al­lowed to take le­gal ac­tion against the board.

The up­dat­ed codes al­so gave the ex­ec­u­tive sole pow­er to de­ter­mine whether a com­plaint is se­ri­ous enough to be re­ferred for an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, to de­ter­mine who sits on Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tees, and to de­cide what ac­tion is tak­en, if any, against an al­leged wrong­do­er.

The seem­ing at­tempt to muz­zle the board came two weeks af­ter the TTPS raid­ed the TTCB’s Cou­va Head­quar­ters on May 8.

In the raid’s af­ter­math, TTCB Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath sought to as­sure the pub­lic that the board would be sup­port­ing the TTPS with its in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“Let the po­lice do their work, and we await the fi­nal re­sult. I don’t think they would give me a dead­line (for com­plet­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions) at all. They will take their time and do their in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Bas­sarath said dur­ing an in­ter­view on I95.5 FM last week.

Be­fore that, he told an­oth­er me­dia house that the TTCB re­mains ful­ly com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy.

“We trust that the prop­er in­ves­tiga­tive process­es will take their course,” he said.

Sports Min­is­ter Watts la­bels fund­ing de­ba­cle as very, very se­ri­ous

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk re­port­ed that Sports Min­is­ter Phillip Watts plans to meet with SporTT Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ja­son Williams to­mor­row over a 2025 in­ter­nal SporTT au­dit.

The min­is­ter de­scribed the find­ings as “very, very se­ri­ous”.

“They were hav­ing a good time. They had a good thing go­ing. It seems as though there was some sort of col­lu­sion. Let me talk to Ja­son Williams (SporTT Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer) on this on Mon­day. This is very, very se­ri­ous,” he said af­ter read­ing the re­port.

He was not aware of or briefed on the re­port be­fore Guardian Me­dia pro­vid­ed him with a copy.

In March 2025, the SporTT CEO re­ceived a re­port from a board-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee on fund­ing pro­vid­ed to the TTCB be­tween 2019 and 2023.

The au­dit com­mit­tee’s re­port found that the board re­ceived $14.8 mil­lion more than its orig­i­nal al­lo­ca­tions be­tween 2019 and 2023. The TTCB was, at first, al­lo­cat­ed $13.4 mil­lion but even­tu­al­ly re­ceived $28.2 mil­lion in tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

A fur­ther $4.8 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to the TTCB in 2022, but the TTCB got $11.5 mil­lion, $6.7 mil­lion more.

In 2023, the bud­get was $2.33 mil­lion. The crick­et board col­lect­ed $11.7 mil­lion, $9.3 mil­lion more.

The Au­dit Com­mit­tee’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion found that there were dif­fer­ences in the amount of mon­ey list­ed by the TTCB on in­voic­es com­pared to the amounts of mon­ey it list­ed for the same event on sup­port­ing doc­u­ments like cheques and vouch­ers. Spe­cif­ic oc­cur­rences were flagged in 2020, 2021 and 2023.

In 2020, the TTCB re­ceived $298,500 to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of women’s crick­et. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion found that “there was no ev­i­dence of pay­ments made to the clubs by TTCB.” SporTT gave the TTCB $153,000 for op­er­a­tional costs. More than $131,400 was un­ac­count­ed for. It was re­port­ed that on­ly “sup­ports (doc­u­ments) for $21,585 were seen.”

In 2021, the board got $201,000 for prepa­ra­tions for the re­gion’s one-day crick­et com­pe­ti­tion, the CG In­sur­ance Su­per50 Cup. The re­port found that there was no ev­i­dence of ver­i­fi­ca­tion and ap­proval of in­voic­es by the TTCB and no ev­i­dence of pay­ment in­for­ma­tion seen (cheque, pay­ment vouch­ers, re­ceipts from cus­tomers, ACH).

In 2023, due to the ab­sence of sup­port­ing doc­u­ments, no rec­on­cil­i­a­tions (the process of ver­i­fy­ing that two sets of records agree) were able to de­ter­mine how $776,000 was spent. These events in­clud­ed $184,800 for a crick­et acad­e­my and $218,625 for na­tion­al youth team prepa­ra­tions.

Back­ground of the TTCB fund­ing mat­ter

Un­der the lead­er­ship of Bas­sarath, a 2017 NGC au­dit found that $3 mil­lion of spon­sor­ship funds were trans­ferred by the TTCB with­out ap­proval from NGC.

The re­port al­so dis­cov­ered al­leged fraud. False in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed by the TTCB in its fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2014 and 2015, in­clud­ing du­pli­cate re­port­ing of funds.

Af­ter that, Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers de­liv­ered a SporTT in­ves­tiga­tive re­port called “Project Barcelona”.

That in­ves­ti­ga­tion found al­leged col­lu­sion be­tween for­mer SporTT di­rec­tor Im­ran Jan and TTCB Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath to pro­vide the board with in­creased fund­ing.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion dis­cov­ered mul­ti­ple in­stances where Jan at­tempt­ed to with­draw his lim­it to pro­vide the TTCB with fund­ing.

It was al­so found that Jan was giv­en a job as a na­tion­al coach in ex­change for the in­creased fund­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions, since 2014, the TTCB has re­ceived more than $100 mil­lion in fund­ing for the board and T&T Red Force (which it man­ages) from SporTT, Crick­et West In­dies, and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Sport & Cul­ture Fund (OPM­SCF).

More than $53 mil­lion was in state fund­ing, in­clud­ing $28 mil­lion from SporTT.