FIFA keeps control of Trinidad football for ‘extra’ year

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):

The Normalisation Committee set up to oversee the running of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) has been given an extra year to complete its work.

World governing body for football, FIFA, cited the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and legal action taken by the former TTFA executive among the reasons for its decision to extend the committee’s mandate until March 31, 2023 “at the latest”.

The tenure of the four-member committee which was appointed in March 2020 to manage the affairs of the TTFA had been until March 26, 2022.

However, a letter from FIFA’s General Secretary Fatma Samoura to chairman of the Normalisation Committee, Robert Hadad, stated that the TTFA situation had been brought to the attention of the Bureau of the FIFA Council and a decision was taken to give the committee more time. The letter outlined the reasons for that.

The Normalisation Committee was appointed in accordance with FIFA statutes to run the TTFA’s daily affairs, establish a debt repayment plan that is implementable by the TTFA administration, to review and amend the TTFA statutes and other regulations where necessary, and ensure their compliance with the FIFA statutes and requirements before duly submitting them for approval to the TTFA Congress, and to organise and conduct elections of a new TTFA Executive Committee for a four-year mandate.

LAUNCHED A CHALLENGE AGAINST COMMITTEE

The then TTFA, led by President William Wallace together with vice-presidents Clynt Taylor, Joseph Sam Phillip, and Susan Joseph-Warrick who were elected in November 2019, launched a challenge against the appointment of the Normalisation Committee at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in March and then to the High Courts in Trinidad.

That decision led FIFA to suspend the TTFA on September 24, 2020. However, FIFA stated in November that year that it was informed that all claims against it before the ordinary courts of Trinidad and Tobago had been closed. Consequently, the suspension was lifted with immediate effect.

“The Bureau took note that the actions taken by members of the former Board of Directors of the TTFA greatly hindered and significantly impacted the work and mandate of the Normalisation Committee, as it had to devote considerable effort to counter such actions,” Samoura wrote in his letter to Hadad.

“In addition, that the tasks assigned to the Normalisation Committee were subsequently delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and sanitary restrictions imposed by the government of Trinidad and Tobago.”

It also noted that there were certain issues that led to the backlog in the normal operations of the TTFA, including finance, which contributed to the inability to appoint an independent auditor, which in turn meant that no audited financial statements could be prepared (and thus presented); the inability to make payments directly to the TTFA’s bank account due to a high risk of garnishment, thereby restricting the TTFA from making immediate payments when necessary and having more freedom with regard to the use of the funds, and the budget cuts imposed due to the multiple claims and payment demands from creditors.

The Bureau also acknowledged that last month, due to the current total debts of the TTFA, the Normalisation Committee notified the Office of the Supervisory of Insolvency of its intention to make a proposal under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Normalisation Committee together with a Licensed Trustee under the Act will manage the debt proposal process.

It was against the background of all those circumstances and “considering all the urgent and complex challenges the TTFA is still facing”, Samoura said, that the mandate of the Normalisation Committee was extended.