A re­cent in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fund­ing pro­vid­ed to the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) by the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T Lim­it­ed (SporTT) dis­cov­ered that the fund­ing was 109 per­cent over ini­tial bud­gets.

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.

$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.

Guardian Me­dia Sport com­pared the ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­tures list­ed in the au­dit in­ves­ti­ga­tion to the fig­ures re­port­ed by SporTT in its sub­mit­ted fi­nan­cial au­dits for 2021 and 2022.

The num­bers did not match. It’s im­por­tant to note, how­ev­er, that au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments are based on fis­cal years, which run from Oc­to­ber 1 to Sep­tem­ber 30 of the fol­low­ing year.

The 2022 SporTT au­dit stat­ed that $9.3 mil­lion was giv­en in fund­ing to crick­et in fis­cal 2022. The TTCB alone re­ceived $11.7 mil­lion in cal­en­dar 2022.

As con­firmed by TTCB sources, SporTT, on oc­ca­sion, al­so funds zon­al crick­et as­so­ci­a­tions di­rect­ly, as some as­so­ci­a­tions don’t re­ceive mon­ey from the board.

The 2021 SporTT au­dit said $1.78 mil­lion was giv­en to crick­et in fis­cal 2020. The TTCB alone re­ceived $4.49 mil­lion in cal­en­dar 2020.

SporTT’s 2025 in­ves­ti­ga­tion came sev­en years af­ter Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers de­liv­ered a foren­sic in­ves­tiga­tive re­port.

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.

“Due to the un­time­ly rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process, SDU (Sports De­vel­op­ment Unit) is not able to as­sess whether the NGB has a re­fund re­mit to SporTT.

“Rec­on­cil­i­a­tions are not rec­on­ciled where the funds dis­bursed to TTCB ver­sus the ac­tu­al spend, nor are in­for­ma­tion such as at­ten­dance to events vs re­quest, meals and air­fare vs re­quest and ac­tu­al in­voic­es vs re­quest rec­on­ciled,” the re­port stat­ed.

Spe­cif­ic oc­cur­rences were flagged in 2020, 2021 and 2023. Guardian Me­dia ex­am­ines a few.

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.”

2021

The board got $201,000 for prepa­ra­tions for the re­gion’s one-day crick­et com­pe­ti­tion, the CG In­sur­ance Su­per 50 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).

De­spite col­lect­ing $81,000 for the air­fare and ac­com­mo­da­tion of a train­er and masseuse, there was no pay­ment or in­voice seen.

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.

Re­gion­al Four-Day Tour­na­ment Prepa­ra­tions - $321,450

An Un­der-13 Trip to Guyana - $51,822

A Sep­tem­ber Crick­et Acad­e­my - $184,800

Na­tion­al U-15, U-17 and U-19 teams Team Prepa­ra­tion - $218,625

The on­ly in­voic­es sub­mit­ted by TTCB were for re­im­burse­ment. One in­voice was $50,000 for fruits from a ven­dor. No oth­er de­tails were pro­vid­ed in the in­voice - not even the type of fruit pur­chased.

Guardian Me­dia Sports ob­tained a copy of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion’s find­ings.

In a signed let­ter dat­ed March 13 2025, the Head of SporTT’s In­ter­nal Au­dit Com­mit­tee wrote to SporTT chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Ja­son Williams ex­plain­ing what was un­earthed.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, in De­cem­ber 2023, SporTT’s Board of Di­rec­tors re­quest­ed an au­dit of the ex­pen­di­ture ap­proved by SporTT for the TTCB.

The re­view was ap­proved in Jan­u­ary 2024 by the In­ter­nal Au­dit Sub­com­mit­tee.

As part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the In­ter­nal Au­dit Com­mit­tee ob­tained all pay­ment pack­ages and re­viewed all of NGB’s fund­ing from SporTT to TTCB for the pe­ri­od 2019 to 2023.

It al­so re­viewed all rel­e­vant sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion to sup­port rec­on­cil­i­a­tion for fund­ing pro­vid­ed.

The ob­jec­tives were to as­sess whether sup­port­ing doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to SporTT by TTCB as sup­port­ing doc­u­ments ev­i­dence for fund­ing pro­vid­ed; To de­ter­mine whether the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process for fund­ing pro­vid­ed to TTCB was ad­hered to, lined with SporTT NGB fund­ing pol­i­cy; and to iden­ti­fy any weak­ness­es or Gaps in the process for fund­ing pro­vid­ed to TTCB.

SporTT - There was no over-bud­get­ing

In a writ­ten re­sponse, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment of SporTT de­nied that there was over-bud­get­ing of funds for the TTCB.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment agency, the TTCB re­mains el­i­gi­ble for fund­ing, sub­ject to an ap­proval process and the avail­abil­i­ty of funds.

Asked to com­ment specif­i­cal­ly on the find­ings of the au­dit com­mit­tee’s in­ves­tiga­tive re­port, SporTT said it strives to main­tain good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples and best prac­tices.

It said fol­low­ing the con­cerns raised in the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port, SporTT con­ducts reg­u­lar au­dits to iden­ti­fy any gaps in its process­es and con­trols, with rec­om­men­da­tions im­ple­ment­ed ac­cord­ing­ly and mon­i­tored by the In­ter­nal Au­dit De­part­ment.

It sought to ex­plain the process for ob­tain­ing fund­ing.

“A re­quest for fund­ing must be sub­mit­ted at least three months pri­or to the event or ac­tiv­i­ty in ques­tion, along with sup­port­ing doc­u­ments. SporTT al­so em­ploys a com­pli­ance ma­trix to de­ter­mine the com­pli­ance of NG­Bs with SporTT pre­req­ui­sites for fund­ing.

“NG­Bs must sub­mit the fol­low­ing doc­u­ments to be con­sid­ered com­pli­ant and be con­sid­ered for fund­ing: Strate­gic Plan, De­vel­op­ment Plan, Op­er­a­tional Plan, Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cials, AGM Min­utes, Cal­en­dar of Events, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion and In­cor­po­ra­tion Sta­tus and NPO (Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tion) Reg­is­tra­tion Cer­tifi­cate,” it said.

Ac­cord­ing to SporTT, the re­quest is first re­viewed by the Sports De­vel­op­ment Unit and rec­om­men­da­tions are made to the Fi­nance Sub-Com­mit­tee.

“Any fund­ing ap­proved by the Sub-Com­mit­tee must then ob­tain ap­proval from the SporTT board of di­rec­tors be­fore sub­mis­sion to the Min­istry of Sport for ul­ti­mate ap­proval. Once ap­proved at the Min­istry lev­el, fund­ing is dis­bursed to SporTT for pay­ment to the NGB.

“Fund­ing is dis­bursed pro­vid­ed the NGB is com­pli­ant with re­spect to its re­port­ing of ex­pen­di­ture by pro­vid­ing an­nu­al/cur­rent au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments. Con­sid­er­a­tion is al­so giv­en based on the pri­or­i­ty lev­el of the event,” SporTT wrote.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment agency, it al­so pro­vides fund­ing for ma­jor sport­ing events host­ed in T&T.

In 2022 and 2023, SporTT said it sup­port­ed host­ing of the fol­low­ing crick­et events:

ICC Un­der-19 Crick­et World Cup 2022 (14 Jan – 6 Feb 2022).

West In­dies vs In­dia bi­lat­er­al crick­et se­ries (Ju­ly 22-29, 2022).

Caribbean Pre­mier League 2023.

West In­dies vs In­dia (Ju­ly 20-24 and Au­gust 1-3, 2023)

Bas­sarath - We are Not Aware of Re­port - Box

Mean­while, TTCB pres­i­dent Bas­sarath told Guardian Sports that the board is not aware that an au­dit re­port was done by SporTT.

“Such a re­port has not been shared with TTCB and has not been made avail­able to us. These is­sues you are re­fer­ring to have nev­er been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the Board, and the TTCB has not been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a Man­age­ment Re­sponse to any Au­dit re­port from the SporTT COM­PA­NY…

“As far as I know, we have ac­count­ed for every cent re­ceived from those or­gan­i­sa­tions,” he said.

The 2018 SporTT In­ves­ti­ga­tion

In 2018, Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC) de­liv­ered a re­port called ‘Project Barcelona.’

It was a foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to pro­cure­ment, con­tract­ing and ex­pen­di­ture ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at SporTT.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tors spoke with whistle­blow­ers who hand­ed them al­leged record­ed meet­ings and con­ver­sa­tions be­tween for­mer SporTT Di­rec­tor Im­ran Jan and ex­ter­nal par­ties, in­clud­ing TTCB pres­i­dent Bas­sarath and for­mer TTCB CEO Su­ruj Ra­goonath.

“Jan ap­peared to have shared de­tails re­gard­ing SporTT fund­ing to TTCB and oth­er na­tion­al sport­ing bod­ies with Az­im Bas­sarath and ap­peared to have been at­tempt­ing to in­flu­ence the pro­vi­sion of SporTT fund­ing to TTCB. Jan ap­peared to be com­mu­ni­cat­ing his progress or lack there­of, with seek­ing to so­lic­it fund­ing to TTCB to Bas­sarath.

“We al­so not­ed Jan at­tempt­ed to ap­prove pay­ments to TTCB by sign­ing ap­proval doc­u­ments on three sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions in Sep­tem­ber 2017 for amounts that ex­ceed­ed his ap­proval lim­it as a mem­ber of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of the Board. These pay­ments were ceased as a breach of pol­i­cy, as ap­proval by the chair­man was re­quired un­der SporTT’s del­e­gat­ed fi­nan­cial au­thor­i­ty. The pay­ment vouch­ers in­di­cate the pay­ments re­lat­ed to re­quests for cov­er­age of TTCB ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es for Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary and March 2017 in amounts that range from ap­prox $134,000 to $146,000,” the re­port stat­ed.

PwC’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion al­so re­vealed that Jan was ap­point­ed as a na­tion­al crick­et coach af­ter text mes­sages were shared be­tween him and Bas­sarath, sug­gest­ing the ap­point­ment was a re­ward for in­flu­enc­ing fund­ing.

“We not­ed ref­er­ence was made by Az­im Bas­sarath to mov­ing Jan ‘to the front of the line’ in a pri­or Ju­ly 2017 text mes­sage to Jan. These mes­sages sug­gest a con­flict of in­ter­est as Jan was ap­point­ed as a na­tion­al crick­et coach by TTCB while he was a board mem­ber of SporTT, and SporTT is a gov­ern­ing body re­gard­ing all na­tion­al sport­ing bod­ies in­clud­ing TTCB,” the re­port read.

Last Mon­day, Bas­sarath was asked about the PwC in­ves­ti­ga­tion dur­ing an in­ter­view with I95FM.

“I can’t re­call that. That is over eight years now. Can you re­mem­ber speak­ing to some­body in 2020?... I don’t re­mem­ber the time, but we would have spo­ken to Im­ran Jan…We al­ways talked about crick­et and the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et. The pas­sion we had for crick­et. We could have talked about dif­fer­ent things.

“But that’s not true. I don’t re­mem­ber him giv­ing me any in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

SporTT’s man­date is to con­struct and up­grade recre­at­ing grounds for com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty; to pro­mote the con­cept of sport for all; to pro­vide over­sight, fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to the man­age­ment of 15 na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies (In­clud­ing the TTCB); and the en­hance­ment of the medal po­ten­tial for T&T ath­letes.

Back­ground

On May 8, the Po­lice Ser­vice Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (SIU) raid­ed the TTCB’s of­fices in Bal­main, Cou­va.

In late 2023, whistle­blow­er and for­mer TTCB trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo re­port­ed to po­lice that at least $500,000 was miss­ing/un­ac­count­ed for from the TTCB’s fi­nan­cial ac­counts, ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of an au­dit.

A fe­male staff mem­ber wrote a res­ig­na­tion let­ter ad­mit­ting to mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing funds.

Chaitoo was then re­moved in a suc­cess­ful no-con­fi­dence mo­tion.

The TTCB then passed a mo­tion ban­ning any mem­ber who lost a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion for a decade from con­test­ing elec­tions.

Over the last few years, sev­er­al cor­po­rate spon­sors have paused or with­drawn sup­port from TTCB com­pe­ti­tions be­cause of con­cerns ex­pressed by au­dits.

An NGC au­dit found that the spon­sor­ship funds were trans­ferred by the TTCB with­out ap­proval.

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

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sport’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions, since 2014, the TTCB 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.

Ac­cord­ing to Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act Re­quest doc­u­ments, the OPM­SCF pro­vid­ed $2.8 mil­lion in fund­ing to the TTCB be­tween 2019 and 2022.

TTCB sources es­ti­mat­ed that an­oth­er $1.8 mil­lion was pro­vid­ed in 2023 and 2024.

As men­tioned ear­li­er in the re­port, be­tween 2019 and 2023, the crick­et board col­lect­ed $28 mil­lion from SporTT.

Be­tween 2021 and 2024, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) al­lo­cat­ed $29 mil­lion to the TTCB.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia Sport’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions dis­cov­ered that the TTCB has over 15 au­dits out­stand­ing for the CWI.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTCB sources, the bud­gets sub­mit­ted for the out­stand­ing au­dits are worth around $20 mil­lion.

Bas­sarath de­nied be­ing be­hind in any au­dits dur­ing a ra­dio in­ter­view on i95.5FM on May 16, 2025.

The TTCB ob­tained an­oth­er $25 mil­lion from the CWI for Red Force T&T Lim­it­ed.

Red Force Lim­it­ed is a pri­vate com­pa­ny formed by the TTCB in 2014 as part of the re­vamp­ing of the re­gion­al four-day com­pe­ti­tion and the Re­gion­al Su­per-50 com­pe­ti­tion.

TTCB sources called for a foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Red Force’s and TTCB’s fi­nances, cit­ing con­cerns about the busi­ness re­la­tion­ship.

They were par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about a $4.8 mil­lion ‘man­age­ment fee’ paid by Red Force to the TTCB in fis­cal 2024.

On May 18, dur­ing the board’s quar­ter­ly an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, the TTCB up­dat­ed its code of con­duct, giv­ing the ex­ec­u­tive in­creased dis­ci­pli­nary pow­er.

The up­dat­ed codes give 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.