William Wal­lace, the oust­ed pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion has dis­re­gard­ed a threat by FI­FA's Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man Robert Hadad to not use the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's let­ter­head, by is­su­ing a re­lease us­ing the TTFA's let­ter­head in a re­spond­ing to Hadad.

Af­ter­wards, he told Guardian Me­dia Sports he will con­tin­ue to func­tion in his ca­pac­i­ty of pres­i­dent of the TTFA, not­ing his le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive will deal with every­thing else.

Wal­lace and his vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Sam Phillips and Su­san Joseph-War­rick were boot­ed out of of­fice on March 17, when the gov­ern­ing body for the sports glob­al­ly FI­FA de­cid­ed to en­forced Ar­ti­cle 8.2 of its Statutes to ap­point a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee on March 27 to man­age lo­cal foot­ball.

Wal­lace and his team have since de­cid­ed to chal­lenge this through the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Lau­sanne Switzer­land. on Wednes­day in a let­ter, how­ev­er, Wal­lace said the ac­cu­sa­tion by Hadad is un­for­tu­nate and un­true. Ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal foot­ball boss: "I have read in one dai­ly news­pa­per a quote at­trib­uted to the spokesman for the pur­port­ed Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to man­age the af­fairs of the As­so­ci­a­tion, which ac­cus­es the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed of­fi­cers of the TTFA of "fraud" This is both un­for­tu­nate and un­true."

"Hav­ing been elect­ed fol­low­ing a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion, which in­ci­den­tal­ly was con­duct­ed un­der the su­per­vi­sion of FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF, we re­main in charge of the As­so­ci­a­tion and the on­ly per­sons au­tho­rised to use the TTFA sta­tion­ary. While the TTFA re­mains an af­fil­i­ate of FI­FA, it does not have the pow­er to re­move the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Ex­ec­u­tive and usurp the run­ning of the TTFA by de­cree."

"Thus the use of the TTFA sta­tion­ary etc by FI­FA’s nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee is and re­mains unau­tho­rised. This mat­ter is present­ly be­fore the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport. Giv­en the val­ue that the TTFA places in the re­la­tion­ship with FI­FA, we have cho­sen to sub­mit to the ju­ris­dic­tion of CAS. How­ev­er, make no mis­takes about it, un­less and un­til CAS rules to the con­trary, the du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive re­mains in charge of TTFA. I, there­fore, will con­tin­ue to use the TTFA sta­tion­ary, as nec­es­sary, to com­mu­ni­cate with TTFA per­son­nel and the gen­er­al pub­lic."

The two par­ties (Wal­lace and Hadad) have al­so been em­broiled in a le­gal bat­tle for the use of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's ac­counts at First Cit­i­zens Bank, but the lat­ter in a le­gal doc­u­ment on Mon­day de­nied both par­ties, say­ing it was un­sure of whom had the right of own­er­ship of the ac­counts. The bank, in a let­ter from its At­tor­ney Kendell Alexan­der, said who­ev­er wants ac­cess to the ac­counts must walk with a le­gal doc­u­ment as proof of own­er­ship.

Its de­ci­sion prompt­ed an im­me­di­ate re­sponse from Wal­lace through his at­tor­ney Matthew Gayle, who de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as re­gret­table.

But with the ac­counts need­ed for FI­FA pro­posed in­jec­tion of funds that rep­re­sent its grants to mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions, as well as a Covid-19 Re­lief Funds, it is un­cer­tain if Hadad would get it in time to pay of­fice and tech­ni­cal staff salaries, among oth­er things.

Hadad was last night ex­pect­ed to meet with mem­bers of the tech­ni­cal staff and it was ex­pect­ed that he was go­ing to as­sure them salaries soon.