PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Counsel for the ousted Trinidad and Tobago Football Association executive has hit back at First Citizens Bank’s “aggressive and defensive” response to an email earlier this week, seeking clarification on the alleged changing of signatories on the TTFA accounts.
Noting that his letter to the bank a week ago had been “inadvertently misrepresented”, TTFA counsel Matthew Gayle pushed back on suggestion from FCB that the correspondence had somehow injured their reputation and image.
“My client’s directors have recently become aware that a person or persons have attempted and/or may be in the process of attempting to change the named signatories of the TTFA accounts held with your client,” the Express newspaper here quoted Gayle as saying in response to FCB’s lawyer Kendell Alexander.
“It may be the case that they purport to possess authority to do so on the basis of letters of instruction which originate from a body outside of Trinidad and Tobago and which has no standing to provide your client with any such instructions on behalf of my client.”
In an April 17 letter, Gayle warned FCB of court action if they attempted “to change the signatories on the account … without the express approval of Mr William Wallace (former TTFA president) and/or the duly elected executives”.
But in a stern response, Alexander said Tuesday that Gayle’s correspondence could be considered defamatory in that it “could have the effect of discrediting and/or lowering our client’s professional image and reputation as a competent, confidential and prudent financial institution in the estimation of right-thinking members of society”.
Gayle, who is spearheading the TTFA executive’s fight against the takeover by FIFA’s normalisation committee, dismissed Alexander’s assertion as “ignoratio elenchi” or providing an argument that missed the point .
Unless FCB responded to his concerns by Monday, Gayle said the TTFA would take the matter to the High Court.
The normalisation committee headed by Trinidadian businessman Robert Hadad, have assumed control of the TTFA’s operations after football’s world governing body, FIFA, announced last month it was intervening in the affairs of the beleaguered local organisation.
Wallace and the TTFA executive recently took the fight with FIFA before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. In his letter to Alexander, Gayle contended that Wallace and his executives remained in charge of the country’s football and in control of the TTFA’s bank accounts.
“It is a matter of incontrovertible fact that my client’s president and three vice-presidents were elected by virtue of an internal election to the TTFA held in November 2019,” Gayle pointed out.
“This was in compliance with the constitution of the TTFA and no process recognised by the constitution has to date been invoked to effect their removal.
“Following this election, Mr Wallace and others elected, assumed authority and control of the TTFA accounts held with your client in the proper way.”
