Chamber Members in the Trinidad Guardian

ET&T Su­per League pres­i­dent Keith Look Loy has been giv­en the green light to kick off his law­suit against the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) over trans­paren­cy in the con­struc­tion of its US$2.5 mil­lion “Home for Foot­ball”.

On Fri­day, High Court Judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh grant­ed Look Loy leave to pur­sue his ju­di­cial re­view claim against the TTFA over the fail­ure of its se­nior of­fi­cials to dis­close de­tails re­lat­ed to the project in Bal­main, Cou­va, to him and oth­er di­rec­tors.

Look Loy filed the case dur­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry’s an­nu­al va­ca­tion in Au­gust, but Boodoos­ingh on­ly ruled that he had pre­sent­ed an ar­guable case with a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess, this week.

Boodoos­ingh’s rul­ing on the is­sue is on­ly the first stage of the law­suit, which is ex­pect­ed to go on tri­al lat­er this year or ear­ly next year.

In the claim, Look Loy is al­leg­ing that he is en­ti­tled to the in­for­ma­tion which in­cludes fi­nan­cial records and de­tails on the con­trac­tors and project man­ag­er hired for the project.

He is al­so seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that TTFA pres­i­dent David John-Williams and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Justin Lat­apy-George act­ed ir­ra­tional­ly and un­rea­son­ably in re­peat­ed­ly fail­ing to dis­close the in­for­ma­tion.

In an af­fi­davit, that would serve as ev­i­dence in the even­tu­al tri­al, Look Loy claimed that he made sev­er­al re­quests to both men since De­cem­ber, last year, all of which were ig­nored.

“My re­quests for in­spec­tion of the doc­u­ments afore­men­tioned has not been made whim­si­cal­ly to the TTFA in any way, My re­quests have been on­go­ing for at least eight months and are of ut­most im­por­tance to en­sure trans­paren­cy in the in­ter­est of the pub­lic,” Look Loy said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that the de­lays could fa­cil­i­tate tam­per­ing with the doc­u­ments.

“Mem­bers of the con­stituen­cy that I rep­re­sent on the board of the TTFA have ex­pressed to me that they are con­cerned that the re­peat­ed stalling in the pro­vid­ing of the in­for­ma­tion to me, is to fa­cil­i­tate the man­u­fac­ture and the ma­nip­u­la­tion of the fi­nan­cial project records,” he said.

In a sup­ple­men­tal af­fi­davit filed last week, Look Loy said he was of­fered an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments af­ter he filed the law­suit. How­ev­er, the day be­fore he was ex­pect­ed to do so, he was told he had to sign a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment first. He re­fused.

“I came to the con­clu­sion that the TTFA clear­ly was tak­ing con­tin­u­ing steps to avoid hav­ing to show me the doc­u­ments and in­for­ma­tion I had re­quest­ed and the last minute im­po­si­tion of this pre-con­di­tion on my ac­cess was just an­oth­er step in the process,” he said.

Look Loy said that at a board meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 9, he again made a re­quest that was sup­port­ed by Collin Par­tap of the Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CFA), Joseph Tay­lor of the ref­er­ees’ as­so­ci­a­tion and Sharon War­rick of the Women’s League.

He said that TTFA vice-pres­i­dent Ew­ing Davis re­fused to put the mo­tion to a vote as he claimed that it would re­quire le­gal ad­vice.

Look Loy is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Matthew Gayle, Dr Emir Crowne and Sher­iza Khan of New City Cham­bers.

The “Home for Foot­ball” project is ex­pect­ed to in­clude a 72-room ho­tel, train­ing pitch­es, an en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre and ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices for the as­so­ci­a­tion.

The sod was turned in Sep­tem­ber, last year, with con­struc­tion start­ing in Feb­ru­ary. The project was spon­sored by Fi­fa and is be­ing con­struct­ed on a lit­tle over sev­en hectares of land do­nat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

The project was al­ready at an ad­vanced stage when Fi­fa rep­re­sen­ta­tive Veron Mosen­go-Om­ba and Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe con­duct­ed a tour in Au­gust.