Former vice president of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) Bissoondyal Singh yesterday refuted GCB’s General Secretary Anand Sanasie’s version of the signing of visa application letters for two cricketers Marvin Munroe and Wasim Haslim.
Sanasie was arrested on Friday morning by members of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and was told to furnish the GPF with a statement concerning his involvement in assisting cricketers to acquire visas to travel abroad for the purpose of playing cricket. According to Sanasie’s lawyer, Roysdale Forde, his client complied with the request and later Friday afternoon issued the GPF with a wide ranging statement which dealt with among other things, his version of the issuance of visa application letters to two cricketers Marvin Munroe and Wasim Haslim.
In the statement, Sanasie disclosed that letters were written indicating that Haslim was a “Selectee in the Guyana National Squad for the 2006 Under-19 Regional Competition and that Munroe “was a National Cricketer. He represented Guyana at the Under-15 level in 1997 and at the Under-19 level in 2001.
“Bissoondyal Singh signed this letter as the acting president of the Guyana Cricket Board and then passed it to me for my signature which I affixed. Shortly thereafter, Bissoondyal Singh collected the letter (Marvin Munroe) from the office of the Guyana Cricket Board and cancelled his signature and informed me he had subsequently remembered that Marvin Munroe was actually not a National Cricketer but played for Demerara.
“As a consequence of this, the signed letter was never actually issued by the Guyana Cricket Board and remains in file,” Sanasie stated.
But Singh yesterday contacted this newspaper to vehemently deny Sanasie’s version of the event.
“That is not what happened. He brought two letters for me to sign addressed to the Canadian Consular Officer. I asked him if the players fitted the criteria he said yes. I signed Marvin Munroe’s letter and when I looked at the second letter, I saw Wasim Haslim’s name and I knew he had not played for Guyana because he lives on the East Coast. Right there I called the Chairman of Selectors, Claude Raphael, and asked him to clarify whether Munroe had played for Guyana and he said no and I scratched my signature immediately right in front of Sanasie.
“He got angry and demanded I sign the letter. I told him no! That that was fraud. He walked out of the office and left the letter there and that is how it ended up back in the file,” said Singh.
According to the former GCB vice president, it was the first time that Sanasie had brought any correspondence pertaining to Embassy matters for him to sign. Singh said the year was 2009 and he was the acting president at the time but never acted again. “After the argument we had a strained relationship and at two executive meetings after that a next constitution surfaced stating exactly which vice president should act as the president.
“It said that the vice president in charge of administration will be the acting president in the absence of the president and that person was Fizul Bacchus. “I never again acted as president,” Singh said.
