The Court of Ap­peal will take the next few months to con­sid­er an ap­peal re­lat­ed to the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) elec­tions in 2019. 

Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, and Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, and Ricky Rahim re­served their de­ci­sion in the ap­peal be­tween the TTCB and for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

The ap­peal cen­tres around a judg­ment de­liv­ered by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad in Jan­u­ary 2020 af­ter Ram­nar­ine filed it fol­low­ing his de­feat in the ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions. 

While Seep­er­sad dis­missed Ram­nar­ine’s sub­stan­tive claim over the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of TTCB zon­al and af­fil­i­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tives to vote in the elec­tions, he up­held his (Ram­nar­ine) con­cerns over a Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) au­dit in­to al­leged fi­nan­cial dis­crep­an­cies in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. 

The TTCB filed the ap­peal al­leg­ing that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was wrong to have or­dered a five mem­ber com­mit­tee in­clud­ing Ram­nar­ine or his rep­re­sen­ta­tive be ap­point­ed to con­sid­er the ef­fect of the au­dit re­port on the or­gan­i­sa­tion. 

Ram­nar­ine filed a cross ap­peal claim­ing that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad wrong­ly de­cid­ed the sub­stan­tive claim. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions for Ram­nar­ine, his lawyer Kiel Tak­lals­ingh ad­mit­ted that the case was large­ly aca­d­e­m­ic as there were two elec­tions af­ter the con­tentious one al­most six years ago. 

How­ev­er, he point­ed out that the case could help pre­vent sim­i­lar is­sues in oth­er elec­tions in the fu­ture. 

“It is an im­por­tant is­sue con­cern­ing the gov­er­nance of crick­et,” Tak­lals­ingh said. 

He claimed that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was wrong to have per­mit­ted af­fil­i­ates to par­tic­i­pate with­out com­ply­ing with the board’s fi­nan­cial re­port­ing con­di­tions. 

“The judge ap­plied the wrong prin­ci­ples to this case. Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the elec­tion is im­por­tant but the rules that open the door­way for these elec­tions should be strict,” Tak­lals­ingh said. 

“Af­fil­i­ates have a con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion with the TTCB and if you are not com­ply­ing with the rules, then you do not ben­e­fit by hav­ing a vote,” he added. 

Tak­lals­ingh sug­gest­ed that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad could not be fault­ed for mak­ing the or­der in re­la­tion to the NGC re­port. 

Stat­ing that the re­port raised suf­fi­cient con­cerns war­rant­i­ng the or­der, Tak­lals­ingh said: “Why wouldn’t you want an in­ves­ti­ga­tion here. You are ru­in­ing your stand­ing with a ma­jor spon­sor.”

“Clear­ly he was trou­bled by the NGC au­dit re­port, but this was a dis­cre­tionary rem­e­dy in his su­per­vi­so­ry ju­ris­dic­tion,” he said. 

In his sub­mis­sions, Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein, who led the TTCB’s le­gal team, main­tained that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was cor­rect to rule that non-com­pli­ant af­fil­i­ates could still vote in the elec­tion. 

“The learned tri­al judge, quite cor­rect­ly, in in­ter­pret­ing the leg­is­la­tion, opined that one can­not treat the con­sti­tu­tion of the TTCB as if it were set in stone and there­fore, any in­frac­tion would in­val­i­date an elec­tion,” he said. 

“There is noth­ing in the law or in the TTCB’s con­sti­tu­tion which pro­hibits these af­fil­i­ates from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the elec­tions if they do not sub­scribe to the struc­tures im­posed on them by the Con­sti­tu­tion,” he added. 

Deal­ing with the au­dit re­port, Ho­sein ad­mit­ted that be­tween 2014 and 2016, the State com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed a lit­tle over $12 mil­lion in fund­ing for the TTCB. 

He not­ed that the re­port was nev­er shared with the TTCB but was leaked af­ter it was cre­at­ed in March 2017. 

“The TTCB there­fore nev­er had for­mal no­ti­fi­ca­tion of this re­port,” he said. 

He al­so claimed that the re­port nev­er al­leged fraud or mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion by the TTCB.

“There are in­stances of ex­pen­di­ture be­ing un­sup­port­ed by prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion, which is a fea­ture which is not unique in au­dit re­ports,” he said. 

“In any event, the pur­port­ed au­dit re­ports have al­ready been wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed to the mem­ber­ship of the TTCB who were ful­ly aware of its con­tents be­fore the 2019 elec­tions,” he added. 

Ho­sein al­so sug­gest­ed that the judge was wrong to have in­clud­ed Ram­nar­ine or his rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the com­mit­tee based on his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the law­suit.

“The re­spon­dent is a par­ty to this mat­ter, and in­deed it would be high­ly im­prop­er for the Re­spon­dent or his rep­re­sen­ta­tive to be part of this pro­posed au­dit com­mit­tee since it would be a con­flict of in­ter­est,” he said. 

The TTCB was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Aadam Ho­sein, and An­jali Ma­haraj.