THE new Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) Executive, which took office in March 2021, held its first official press conference on Saturday at Grand Coastal, East Coast Demerara.
The over two-hour long media engagement unveiled the Board’s policies and vision, and also the current finances.

Brian Sukhai, who took office in June after the passing of elected Treasurer, Prittipaul Jaigobin, in April, described the financial practices of the previous body as being “not good”, and made stunning revelation that there was only $900 in cash on the premises when they took office.

“The cash in hand, I understand it was G$900 and I need to be clear here, this is cash we had on the premises. We had to jump through some hoops to get the administrative aspect of accessing those accounts.”
Sukhai further stated that the sum in the three accounts at the bank was approximately G$1.5 million.

Outside of sponsorship and ticket sales from International cricket, revenue streams for the GCB mainly lie with Cricket West Indies.

Currently, the board receives US$25,000 in monthly subventions which go towards administrative costs of the GCB, and there is another income of US$17,500 which mainly goes toward the Academy players.

It was explained at the press briefing that regarding the latter figure, they have not been able to access such account as yet, since Cricket Guyana Inc., which managed the affairs of the Guyana Jaguars, is a private entity.

The ongoing legal proceeding to gain access to the accounts is also linked to the rebranding of the Warriors to Guyana Amazon Jaguars, which is now managed by the GCB.

“We did an analysis and there were a couple of things that were not in keeping with financial best practices…we found that no transaction, and we talking here about financial transactions, were posted from the middle of December 2020 to March of 2021 and there was no evidence of Bank reconciliation for that period, the treasurer, who is a certified Accountant explained.

The Treasurer indicated that the GCB was audited up to November 30, 2020.
Given the assessment which discovered irregularities with the accounts, he was questioned on the likelihood of an investigation being launched.

“We are currently considering options; ideally, we would want to advance some form of investigation and I think the public may very well be demanding that but they are currently some bars we need to jump before we can move in that direction, and I rather suspect that would be forthcoming very soon.”

Meanwhile, GCB president Bissoondyal Singh voiced that given the financial situation they encountered when they took office, the Executives pooled their resources to meet the demands of the board until they were able to access some accounts.