PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – The ousted executive of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) has turned to the High Court here in its fight against FIFA’s decision to replace it with a normalisation committee.
The William Wallace-led United TTFA team said in a statement on Monday that it chose to go this route “after long and hard deliberations”, after withdrawing its appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) which it claimed had displayed bias against football’s world governing body.
“United TTFA assures the football community and the people of Trinidad and Tobago that we have carefully considered the options, the potential risks and the beneficial outcomes of this struggle to defend the sovereignty of our country and our football,” the team of Wallace, Clynt Taylor, Susan Joseph-Warrick, Joseph Sam Phillip, Anthony Harford and Keith Look Loy said.
“We are guided by the principles of freedom and democracy enshrined in the supreme and governing law of Trinidad and Tobago—the Constitution—under which TTFA is established.”
The association had complained that the Switzerland-based CAS appeared to be taking sides, pointing out that the TTFA was asked to pay all the fees for the arbitration – in contravention of the court’s regulations which require that the parties split the cost, which FIFA refused to do – and that the court had accepted FIFA’s request for the case to be heard by three arbitrators which tripled the costs associated with the appeal.
The embattled TTFA team said they therefore decided to lodge a brief with the local High Court.
They are asking the court for: a declaration that FIFA’s removal of the TTFA executive, which was elected to office on November 24, 2019, is null, void and of no legal and/or binding effect; a permanent injunction preventing FIFA from interfering in, and/or seeking to override the fair and transparent democratic processes of the TTFA and/or from attempting removing the duly elected executive from office; and a permanent injunction preventing FIFA and/or its agents and/or assigns and/or servants from interfering in the day-to-day management of the TTFA, including the association’s bank accounts and real property.
The latter request comes as the TTFA and the FIFA-appointed normalisation committee fight for control of the association’s accounts at First Citizens Bank.
In March this year, FIFA replaced the TTFA executive with a committee led by local businessman Robert Hadad, on the grounds that a FIFA/CONCACAF fact-finding mission had uncovered financial mismanagement and massive debt that left the local body facing “a very real risk of insolvency and illiquidity”. FIFA had said such a situation put the association and development of football in the country at risk and corrective measures needed to be applied urgently.
However, in the statement on Monday, the executive insisted that within four months of entering office, it had discovered and raised that issue and submitted a report to FIFA outlining how it intended to deal with it.
“Ironically, our discovery is one of the two reasons FIFA used to remove us from office. Even more ironically, FIFA conducts an annual audit at the TTFA and would have done so for the previous four years and never discovered this issue—or, if it was discovered, never demanded that it be fixed.
“…The real reason for FIFA’s unwarranted and illegal interference in TTFA’s internal business is its desire to cover up the financial mismanagement and illegal actions of the last administration,” it charged.
Among the issues which the executive highlighted were the David John-Williams-led administration’s failure to provide contracts for the expenditure of TT$16 million (1 TT dollar = US 16 cents) on the Home of Football, the issuance of dozens of bounced cheques against TTFA accounts, and failure to pay to relevant statutory authorities, the sum of TT$4 million deducted from employees’ salaries.
“The truth is that over the years, and certainly the David John-Williams years (2015-2019), FIFA showed no interest in good governance and proper financial management for the association, nor in its ballooning debt,” it added.
The TTFA executive insisted that FIFA was therefore complicit in the creation of the “financial quagmire” that plagues the association.
The association’s debt stands at approximately TT$50 million.
