A day after a former special adviser to the T&T Football Association (TTFA) Jack Warner was said to have failed to submit claims for monies owed to him by the TTFA, a claim was submitted.
Maria Daniel, the authorised trustee for the TTFA/Normalisation Committee dealing with claims from creditors in a bid to liquidate a $98.5 million TTFA debt, confirmed that Warner, a former Concacaf president and FIFA vice president who was eventually banned from all football over allegations of corruption, submitted a claim for $22.7 million on Friday.
However, he has fallen short of providing satisfactory supporting documents to validate the claims.
"Mr Warner actually sent in a claim today (Friday) with the same figures stated $22.7 million. Again, I will have to go through section 139(2) where persons notified under section one, and they were notified, do not prove their claim within the time limit or within such further time as the court may allow.
"Mr Warner's claims will have to be validated. Right now, there is no support for the claim that would make it validated at this point, so he has to send in more information," Daniel explained.
Warner was among some 299 creditors who voted unanimously in favour of a debt repayment proposal through the Bankruptcy Act that will see them receive based on the current validated claims anywhere from 63 cents in the dollar to 100 percent of the monies owed to them.
The meeting was held at the Home of Football, Couva and chaired remotely by the Supervisor of Insolvency, who was in quarantine.
Daniel, who sought to explain how some of the entire processes were done, said: "The way the process went when we did the notice of intention which would be the first notice would be everything that the TTFA had in their knowledge of possible debts, so it would be their trade payables, legal matters that would be considered contingencies, it would be everything.
"So what that really had was all the contingencies and when I say contingencies, I mean if somebody says you owe me $5 million or you owe me $10 million but no court or no action has agreed to that debt.
"The second step was for people to put in a claim form and that would have moved the numbers from $98.5 million to $59 million.
"After you send in your claims, we look at these claims and as the trustee, I have the power to authorise whether to accept the claim based on the information sent. Now that info must support what you're saying from two perspectives, that it was something that the TTFA agrees to and the value you have put in is reasonable and fair.
"So on that basis, we would have gone through all the claims, looked at the supporting documents, looked at what people were claiming, etc and that moved the figure from the $59 million to $34 million."
The proposal, which was developed by Daniel and her EY Team in collaboration with the TTFA’s FIFA-appointed Normalisation Committee, will be funded by an interest-free USD3.5 million instrument that the TTFA will have 10 years to repay. Creditors owed up to TT$200,000 will be paid in full and the balances above that will be pro-rated. They will also have the option to be paid in US or TT dollars.
The proposal was skilfully crafted to protect the embattled football association from any legal action in the future.
Daniel said: "That is the reason that this Act works, it actually stops the legal action. Anything that comes up before the date of the notice of intention, falls under this same process.
"However, if there was a claim and there was a disagreement, whatever was agreed upon afterwards, this is a step back. For the claims that I have invalidated or disagreed with, there is a 30-day notice for you to come back and argue your point or look at it, and therefore it could still change.
"The amount can go under 63 cents. We said very clearly that based on the validated claims at this point in time, so the first time we spoke about it, it was 30-something cents because we had $59 million worth of claims.
"We brought that down to $34.4 million based on validations so the cents went up plus we got a little extra in the pool. So what would happen now is that if there are significant claims that would be allowed, it's the one pool so pro-rata each person could get less but it can not fall below the 100 cents for the people who are $200,000 and below."
Meanwhile, Robert Hadad refused to explain where monies to finance this debt eradication were sourced. According to Hadad: "We chose not to reveal that just yet until we have the conditions of the loan finalised and we get all the details of the repayment etc."
SOURCE: T&T Guardian