Less than two weeks af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (SIU) raid­ed its of­fices, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board met on Sat­ur­day to up­date its codes of con­duct, giv­ing the ex­ec­u­tive in­creased dis­ci­pli­nary pow­er.

The mo­tion was passed with an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty in Sat­ur­day’s quar­ter­ly an­nu­al meet­ing.

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.

Sev­er­al TTCB sources told Guardian Me­dia that they are deeply con­cerned by the codes, as they would like­ly pro­tect ex­ec­u­tives ac­cused of wrong­do­ing.

The sources com­plained it is an­oth­er ‘dic­ta­to­r­i­al step’, which would al­low ex­ec­u­tives to de­ter­mine whether com­plaints against them­selves are wor­thy of in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

They said it is es­pe­cial­ly wor­ry­ing at this time, giv­en that the lo­cal board is un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“I be­lieve this is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. They are say­ing the de­ci­sion of the ap­peal com­mit­tee is fi­nal.

Their backs are against the wall, so they are do­ing this and do­ing that. You are telling me that I can’t do any­thing like that?

“You can­not get a mo­tion against this present board. The peo­ple who sup­port the board don’t get up and speak in a meet­ing. They just put up their hands when the vote comes,” a TTCB source said.

At­tempts to con­tact TTCB Pres­i­dent Bas­sarath via phone, What­sApp and text mes­sages were un­suc­cess­ful.

Guardian Me­dia Sports ob­tained a copy of the 13-page code of con­duct, and ethics.

Ac­cord­ing to the Code of Ethics, ‘The Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary or Pres­i­dent shall for­ward any com­plaints with sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to the Ex­ec­u­tive for re­view.

“If the com­plaint is mi­nor/triv­ial and does not re­quire fur­ther ac­tion, the com­plainant shall be ad­vised of such. If the breach is sig­nif­i­cant, the com­plaint could be sent to the Na­tion­al Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee for its at­ten­tion and pos­si­ble ac­tion.”

For zon­al com­plaints, the Chair­man or Sec­re­tary must for­ward the com­plaints with sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to the ex­ec­u­tive to re­view.

Mean­while, sec­tion five of the Code of Con­duct deals with con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

Ex­ec­u­tives must now ap­prove the shar­ing or di­vulging of any meet­ing con­tent and doc­u­ments in the pub­lic are­na.

“All con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing the con­tents of all TTCB meet­ings (Ex­ec­u­tive, Board, Com­mit­tees) and doc­u­ments re­ceived by mem­bers/TTCB per­son­nel in the ex­er­cise of du­ties, re­mains the prop­er­ty of the TTCB. Ac­cord­ing­ly, a mem­ber shall not dis­close such con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion, the con­tents of dis­cus­sions and any de­ci­sions, res­o­lu­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions, or di­rec­tives made or giv­en at the Board of Com­mit­tee meet­ings, or any con­fi­den­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween the Board and mem­bers or be­tween some or all of the mem­bers, in re­la­tion to the af­fairs of the Board, nor al­low any of the above to be dis­closed un­less it has been du­ly au­tho­rised by the Ex­ec­u­tive of the Board,” it states.

Sec­tion Six, Pro­fes­sion­al In­tegri­ty, states that “Mem­bers must not en­gage in con­duct or make any pub­lic state­ment like­ly to prej­u­dice the TTCB’s busi­ness or like­ly to harm, de­fame or oth­er­wise bring dis­cred­it up­on or den­i­grate the TTCB or any of its mem­bers, em­ploy­ees or oth­er TTCB per­son­nel.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion Sev­en, Dis­agree­ment or Con­flict, mem­bers shall re­fer any mat­ter of dis­agree­ment or con­flict through the TTCB’s es­tab­lished process for res­o­lu­tion.

The codes were draft­ed on Jan­u­ary 4, and the mo­tion to im­ple­ment them was passed with a ma­jor­i­ty vote on Sat­ur­day.

The codes al­so es­tab­lished fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of ethics: hon­esty, in­tegri­ty, trust­wor­thi­ness, loy­al­ty, fair­ness, em­pa­thy, re­spect, ad­her­ence, pur­suit of ex­cel­lence, lead­er­ship, rep­u­ta­tion and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the Code of Con­duct doc­u­ment, the Code of Con­duct out­lines the gen­er­al ex­pec­ta­tions of the TTCB for its mem­bers, em­ploy­ees, play­ers, of­fi­cials and oth­ers as­so­ci­at­ed with the TTCB and de­scribes stan­dards of be­hav­iour that each per­son is ex­pect­ed to up­hold.

Among the oth­er main sec­tions of the doc­u­ment are du­ties, con­flict of in­ter­est, pur­pose and ap­pli­ca­tion, con­duct at meet­ings, TTCB’s best in­ter­est, co­op­er­a­tion and con­flict.

Ac­cord­ing to TTCB sources, the board’s ex­ec­u­tive al­so ver­bal­ly in­struct­ed mem­bers not to dis­cuss or ask ques­tions about the on­go­ing po­lice fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

They said the meet­ing was one of the short­est quar­ter­ly an­nu­al meet­ings in the board’s re­cent his­to­ry, with the dis­ci­pli­nary codes the on­ly mat­ter be­ing dis­cussed mean­ing­ful­ly.

In late 2023, whistle­blow­er and for­mer TTCB Trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo re­port­ed to po­lice that up to $500,000 or more 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 passed suc­cess­ful­ly by 35 votes for and 12 votes against. He was then barred from be­ing a board mem­ber.

Sev­er­al cor­po­rate spon­sors paused or with­drew sup­port from TTCB com­pe­ti­tions be­cause of Chaitoo’s al­le­ga­tions.

A 2018 Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers’ in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to SporTT, “Project Barcelona”, ex­am­ined al­le­ga­tions of pro­cure­ment, con­tract­ing and ex­pen­di­ture ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

It found that the di­rec­tors of the TTCB andT (at the time) were dis­cussing fund­ing in­creas­es.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 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.

Mean­while, speak­ing on I95.5FM on Fri­day, Bas­sarath ad­dressed the TTPS in­ves­ti­ga­tion when he said, “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 own in­ves­ti­ga­tion… As I’ve said be­fore, the em­ploy­ee (whom he sug­gests is re­spon­si­ble) has since re­signed. She is no longer at­tached to the board, and we await the po­lice ac­tion.” Bas­sarath said.

He al­so de­nied that the TTCB was be­hind in some of its au­dits owed to the CWI.

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions, over the last six years, be­tween 2019 and 2024, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board re­ceived more than $30 mil­lion in tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey through the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Sport & Cul­ture Fund (OPM­SCF) and the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SPORTT).

The board al­so re­ceived $29 mil­lion in fund­ing from CWI, while the T&T Red Force re­ceived an­oth­er $25 mil­lion.