Except for the English duo of Terry Fenwick and Peter Miller, all other Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) creditors, have been paid via a debt settlement exercise approved by the Trinidad and Tobago High Court under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA).
Indicating this position was the trustee appointed by the TTFA Normalisation Committee(NC), to liquidate the Association’s over $50 million debt to creditors. The NC has also indicated that changes to the TTFA constitution will be presented to TTFA delegates next month. This leaves the calling of fresh TTFA elections as the final mandate to be completed by the NC, before it returns football to an elected TTFA executive.
Given the above, TTFA board member Selby Browne, president of the Veterans Football Foundation, sees no reason why the FIFA-imposed Normalisation Committee should not complete its mandate in a further 90 days and had over power.
“One would think that by the start of the third quarter they would be ready to dust their pants and leave,” Browne declared yesterday.
Browne’s comments came following a July 11, meeting between the Normalisation Committee and TTFA delegates at the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) in Port of Spain. TTFA general secretary Amiel Mohammed wrote delegates on July 6, inviting them to a meeting, where trustee Maria Daniel was due to present an update on a settlement process to the TTFA’s historic multi-million dollar debt. However, just seven delegates turned up.
Daniel informed those attending, that the work of the NC concerning the debt-settlement process had been completed and that all TTTFA creditors, except Fenwick and Miller, were paid money owed by the TTFA. The process of clearing the TTFA debt was facilitated via an interest-free US$3.5 million loan that the TTFA will have ten years to repay via its annual FIFA subvention.
The claims of Fenwick and Miller are still before the Court, but, in keeping with a judgement of September 2022, monies have been put aside, in trust, from a FIFA loan, to pay the pair should they win their cases. If they lose, the monies put aside will be shared among the deserving creditors.
At the recent meeting, Normalisation Committee chairman, Robert Hadad, also informed the few delegates present, that FIFA, CONCACAF and the NC had been working on preparing proposals for the necessary changes to the TTFA Constitution, and that those few proposed changes, will be circulated to the TTFA members in August this year.
Given the poor attendance at the July 11 meeting, the Daily Express obtained e-mailed correspondence among TTFA delegates, where Referees Association president Osmond Downer called for an emergency general meeting to be convened.
“One would have thought that, because of the abysmal attendance at the meeting, you would have, by now, informed all the members of the TTFA of the two significant pieces of information that were supplied to the delegates that were present at the meeting,” Downer indicated in correspondence sent to the TTFA general secretary Mohammed.
“I now propose that the Normalisation Committee convene an official Extraordinary General Meeting of the member delegates, at the earliest possible time, so that the members can be officially informed of these and other matters regarding the progress made,” Downer added via the correspondence.
SOURCE: T&T Express