On Sun­day, Guardian Sport re­vealed that while the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) and the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) stat­ed that the TTCB re­ceived $13.6 mil­lion in fund­ing be­tween 2013 and ear­ly 2025, the TTCB was al­so re­spon­si­ble for re­quest­ing and over­see­ing an­oth­er $21.2 mil­lion for com­pe­ti­tion fund­ing.

SporTT con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the $21.2 mil­lion was used for the 2022 ICC Un­der-19 Crick­et World Cup, the Caribbean Pre­mier League (2022 and 2023) men’s and women’s tour­na­ments and re­gion­al bi­lat­er­al se­ries, in­clud­ing West In­dies vs In­dia (2022 and 2023).

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion al­so re­vealed that in 2022, there was a 96 per­cent de­crease in ‘TTCB fund­ing’ from SporTT. For that fi­nan­cial year (2022), ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of a SporTT in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to TTCB spend­ing be­tween 2019 and 2023, there were al­leged dis­crep­an­cies in fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments.

The in­ter­nal au­dit found that the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process by the Sport De­vel­op­ment & Per­for­mance Unit need­ed im­prov­ing, as a for­mat for prepar­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion did not ex­ist, while there were no rec­on­cil­i­a­tions pre­pared for 2019 and 2020.

Guardian Me­dia now sets the record straight on friv­o­lous claims made by the TTCB and a well-known me­dia house that saw it fit to pub­lish fal­si­ties that it did not ver­i­fy or seek to ver­i­fy.

Re­port 1 - “Board Mem­bers Told Guardian Me­dia 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.”

TTCB re­sponse: “The ini­tial dis­cov­ery was made by the Pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Mr Az­im Bas­sarath, who iden­ti­fied blank cheques stubs in the TTCB’s cheque book and prompt­ly in­formed oth­er mem­bers of the Ex­ec­u­tive. This dis­cov­ery was not made by the Trea­sur­er, Mr Kiswah Chaitoo, as has been in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed in the ar­ti­cle.

Fact: Ac­cord­ing to meet­ing min­utes, “Both Joseph Sam Phillip and Mrs Ann Browne-John com­mend­ed Mr Chaitoo for the very good work in de­tect­ing those trans­ac­tions.”

Re­port 2: The NGC au­dit found that $2.98 mil­lion was not spent by the TTCB per the MOU. The funds were trans­ferred to oth­er cat­e­gories of spend­ing with­out ap­proval by NGC.

TTCB: This state­ment is in­ac­cu­rate. The funds were al­lo­cat­ed to oth­er line items with­in the scope of the MOU. At no point were any funds used for pur­pos­es out­side of the MOU.

Fact: NGC’s Fi­nal au­dit re­port dates March 5, 2017 - “Over the three-year term of the Agree­ment (2014 to 2016), 24% of funds ad­vanced by the Com­pa­ny was not spent by Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) in ac­cor­dance with the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU), i.e the agreed cat­e­gories per Ap­pen­dix #1. These funds were uni­lat­er­al­ly trans­ferred to oth­er cat­e­gories by TTCB…Funds un­der­utilised were uni­lat­er­al­ly re-al­lo­cat­ed by TTCB, amount­ing to TT$1.462 mil­lion in 2014, TT$724k in 2015 and TT$797k in 2016.

“The re­al­lo­ca­tion of un­der­uti­lized funds by TTCB with­out writ­ten ap­proval by NGC meant that the or­ga­ni­za­tion breached the re­quire­ment un­der Sec­tion (1) Clause #(IV) which states, “TTCB shall not trans­fer dis­burse­ment al­lo­cat­ed to any of the line items of the fund­ing re­quire­ment and dis­burse­ment sched­ule to items not in­clud­ed in this sched­ule un­less agreed to by NGC.”

Re­port 3: Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act Re­quest doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia re­vealed that the TTCB re­ceived 2.8 mil­lion be­tween 2019 and 2022 from the OPM­SCF. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, sev­en crick­et zones re­ceived a cu­mu­la­tive $2.9 mil­lion in di­rect fund­ing from the OPM­SCF dur­ing those four years.

TTCB re­sponse: “The sev­en crick­et zones of the TTCB re­ceived a to­tal sum of $1.12 mil­lion from 2019 to 2022.”

Fact: Guardian Me­dia’s doc­u­ment to­talled $2,878,193, while the doc­u­ment the TTCB pro­vid­ed to the me­dia, which in­clud­ed fund­ing for 2024, to­talled $3,328,193.20.

Re­port 4: “In May 2024, the Min­istry of Sport gave the TTCB an­oth­er 7.9 mil­lion in fund­ing, as part of $16.64 mil­lion dis­trib­uted to ten na­tion­al sport­ing bod­ies.”

TTCB re­sponse: The TTCB has nev­er re­ceived any fund­ing di­rect­ly from the Min­istry of Sport.

Fact: “To­day, we are dis­trib­ut­ing a lit­tle over $16 mil­lion in sup­port to Crick­et Board, to foot­ball, to box­ing, to a num­ber of dif­fer­ent sport­ing dis­ci­plines, and this is our way of reach­ing out and ex­tend­ing sup­port, say­ing we are pret­ty much right there with your en­deav­ours.” For­mer Sports & Cul­ture Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis, May 29, 2024. SporTT is an arm of the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment.

Re­port 5: “In 2014, TTCB Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath formed a new com­pa­ny to run the af­fairs of T&T crick­et un­der a re­gion­al first-class fran­chise sys­tem in­tro­duced by the CWI.”

TTCB re­sponse: In 2014, all ter­ri­to­r­i­al crick­et boards were man­dat­ed to es­tab­lish a sub­sidiary com­mer­cial en­ti­ty re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the busi­ness of crick­et, in­clud­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of con­tract­ed play­ers and as­so­ci­at­ed com­mer­cial rights.

By this di­rec­tive, the TTCB con­vened a Board meet­ing on May 22, 2014, to de­lib­er­ate and ap­prove the for­ma­tion of such an en­ti­ty.

As a re­sult, Red Force Crick­et T&T Lim­it­ed was du­ly es­tab­lished by the TTCB, not by Mr Az­im Bas­sarath per­son­al­ly, as au­thored by Joshua Seemu­n­gal - in align­ment with sim­i­lar ac­tions tak­en by the oth­er ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards across the re­gion.

Fact: Ac­tu­al ar­ti­cle stat­ed “In 2014, Az­im Bas­sarath, the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) Pres­i­dent, es­tab­lished a new com­pa­ny to man­age T&T's crick­et af­fairs with­in Crick­et West In­dies' (CWI) re­gion­al first-class fran­chise sys­tem. This ini­tia­tive aimed to stream­line the gov­er­nance of crick­et in T&T un­der the new frame­work in­tro­duced by CWI.

The T&T Red Force is a crick­et team rep­re­sent­ing T&T that plays in the re­gion­al first-class fran­chise sys­tem.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ac­cord­ing to a com­pa­ny reg­istry search, the share­hold­ers of the com­pa­ny are the T&T Crick­et Board. The com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tors are list­ed as Az­im Bas­sarath and Ar­joon Ram­lal.

Re­port 6: 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.

Re­sponse: This is com­plete­ly false. The TTCB re­ceived a to­tal of $5,251,919.52 from the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2019 to 2023 - ($4,215,615.58 in di­rect fund­ing to TTCB & $1,036,303.94 to­wards the TTWCA)

Fact: Ac­cord­ing to a SporTT In­ter­nal Au­dit Com­mit­tee’s In­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to NGB Ex­pen­di­ture for the TTCB be­tween 2019 to De­cem­ber 2023, the orig­i­nal al­lo­ca­tion bud­get to the TTCB was $13.42 mil­lion, but ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture for the pe­ri­od was $28.17 mil­lion. This in­clud­ed $21.2 mil­lion for crick­et com­pe­ti­tions, which TTCB, as the na­tion­al gov­ern­ing body (NGB) for crick­et, ap­plied for and processed.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion, signed by Taig­mani Richard­son - Head of In­ter­nal Au­dit, stat­ed, “The in­ter­nal au­dit ob­tained all pay­ment pack­ages and re­viewed 100% of NGB fund­ing from SporTT to TTCB for the pe­ri­od 2019-2023.”