PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, (CMC) – The head of the FIFA-appointed normalisation committee running the affairs of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) has assured staff members awaiting salaries that efforts are being made to pay them, despite the ongoing legal battle for access to the organisation’s bank accounts.
Robert Hadad said while the committee that replaced the TTFA executive was unable to access the accounts at First Citizens Bank here, it was “working on other means” of paying the office staff who last received salaries in February, and technical staff who have not been paid for as long as six months.
“We are aware that we are in a [COVID-19] pandemic and we are in very dangerous times and some people need their money, so we are working around ways of getting them their money before we have control of the bank account,” said the local businessman on the SportsMax Zone programme on Monday, although not disclosing what the alternative means of payment were under consideration.
The TTFA staff, in a letter to ousted president William Wallace over the weekend, urged him to end his fight with the normalisation committee for control of the bank accounts as it was standing in the way of them being paid.
They urged the embattled football boss to consider that if control of the accounts had to be taken before the courts to be settled, “staff members will have to endure extreme hardship because of the extended time we will have to go without a means to be paid”.
The bank has denied both the TTFA and the normalisation committee access for now, and the association’s legal counsel Matthew Gayle on Tuesday wrote to the bank saying his client was pressing ahead with legal action.
Hadad, who confirmed he had seen the employees’ letter, said the TTFA, as an associate member of FIFA, was the only body that could receive FIFA funds and football’s world governing body could only send money to the association’s accounts.
“Until I could confirm to FIFA that we have control of the bank accounts and there is no risk of garnishing, I don’t see any money coming forth,” the committee chairman said.
“We are here to stay and we are representing FIFA and FIFA will only send money to us.”
Hadad made it clear that the normalisation committee would continue the job FIFA had given it to do, despite opposition from Wallace and his executive who have also appealed the takeover at the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) in Switzerland.
“We were not appointed because we wanted to be appointed. We were appointed because the TTFA is in serious debt and in serious risk of insolvency and not being able to pay their debts, and FIFA, they are doing the right thing,” said the 53-year-old CEO of family-owned company Hadco.
“Whether or not it should have been done before, or whatever anyone wants to say, I’m not here to judge that. I don’t know why now, what I do is now, the debt is very high and the revenue we have is not enough to pay the debt and (court) judgments are happening now…. The judgments and the garnishing of the account are all not good situations to be in. So, somebody had to do the job,” he added.
The mandate of the committee is to: run the TTFA’S daily affairs; establish a debt repayment plan that is implementable by the TTFA; review and amend the TTFA statutes (and other regulations where necessary) and to ensure their compliance with the FIFA statutes and requirements before duly submitting them for approval to the TTFA Congress; and organise and to conduct elections of a new TTFA Executive Committee for a four-year mandate.
The Zurich-based FIFA removed the TTFA Board after an assessment found “extremely low overall financial management methods, combined with a massive debt”, which left the local body “facing a very real risk of insolvency and illiquidity”.
