The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) con­firms that it raid­ed the T&T Crick­et Board head­quar­ters in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Thurs­day morn­ing and seized a sub­stan­tial quan­ti­ty of doc­u­ments, be­lieved to be ev­i­dence, dur­ing its op­er­a­tion and in the pres­ence of the TTCB pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath and oth­er of­fice staff.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTPS said it ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant on Thurs­day morn­ing.

The ex­cerised was in re­la­tion to “In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­leged fraud-re­lat­ed of­fences that are on­go­ing and are be­ing led by the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit of the TTPS.

The TTPS re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in all sec­tors and will con­tin­ue to act on cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion in the in­ter­est of jus­tice and pub­lic trust,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin co­or­di­nat­ed the ex­er­cise that in­volved six of­fi­cers, four women and two men.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion comes af­ter the TTCB re­moved and barred the whistle­blow­er Kiswah Chaitoo on Feb­ru­ary 28, 2024, af­ter a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing.

North Zone Chair­man Win­ston Sobers led a small group op­pos­ing the non-con­fi­dence mo­tion against Chaitoo, but their ef­forts failed .

Their ef­fort to de­fend Chaitoo, an ac­coun­tant was fu­tile, as the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion was passed by 35 to 12 votes by a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty of the Board.

The trea­sur­er was re­moved, even­tu­al­ly los­ing an ap­peal too fol­low­ing a 50-page judge­ment is­sued by the sev­en-mem­ber Supreme Ap­pel­late Com­mit­tee (SAC), which was led by Jus­tice Prakash Moo­sai (chair­man) and in­clud­ed Samuel Saun­ders (deputy chair­man) and mem­bers Ren­nie Go­sine, Kent Ghi­sawan, Nor­ris Fer­gu­son, Pat­sy Joseph and Am­mar Sama­roo on De­cem­ber 9. The SAC found that Chaitoo com­mit­ted a “fla­grant breach” of Ar­ti­cle 27 of TTCB’s con­sti­tu­tion, which says, “The pro­ceed­ings of all doc­u­ments and all meet­ings of the ex­ec­u­tive and of the board shall be con­fi­den­tial and not be dis­closed to unau­tho­rised per­sons.”

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Chaitoo’s de­ci­sion to share in­ter­nal in­for­ma­tion with the po­lice be­fore the TTCB com­plet­ed its in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions, along with his “breach­ing his du­ty of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty” by pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion from an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing to this news­pa­per on Jan­u­ary 14, were the cen­tral rea­sons giv­en by the SAC, which it deemed “suf­fi­cient to ground a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence”.

Fol­low­ing his re­moval, the TTCB passed a mo­tion bar­ring for sev­er­al years any per­son who was oust­ed in a no-con­fi­dence vote.

Chaitoo, who was elect­ed TTCB trea­sur­er, along with oth­er mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive, on Oc­to­ber 30, 2021, re­port­ed that, based on an au­dit, up to $500,000 was un­ac­count­ed for from the TTCB’s fi­nan­cial ac­counts.

He re­port­ed in a 2023 An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing that he was un­able to ver­i­fy how $132,313 of TTCB funds up to Ju­ly 31, 2023 – orig­i­nal­ly al­lo­cat­ed for ad­min­is­tra­tion, clean­ing, match fees, train­ing and de­vel­op­ment, trav­el­ling, as well as of­fice and gen­er­al ex­pens­es – had been spent.

Board mem­bers told Guardian Me­dia Sports that up­on this dis­cov­ery, the trea­sur­er said he be­gan to check the fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments for pre­vi­ous years and re­alised that more than $500,000 was un­ac­count­ed for.

Ef­forts to con­tact TTCB Pres­i­dent Bas­sarath for a com­ment on the mat­ter proved fu­tile.