The Editor Speaks: A new broom but is it enough?
Lee Ramoon has been elected as the new Cayman Islands Football Association (CIFA) President and Wendy Fisher is the new deputy general secretary.
The utter arrogance of Bruce Blake, the acting former President whom the clubs kept in the top place, boasted he didn’t need the government’s subsidy. CIFA had plenty of other sponsorships and he wasn’t worried.
However, at the CIFA meeting held last Saturday, treasurer, Armando Ebanks, told a different tale. He said CIFA was in an exceptionally challenging position when it came to finance.
In addition to government freezing its grant of $127,000 FIFA withdraw its annual $250,000 grant and CONCACAF stopped its $100,000 funding.
And despite Blake’s assurances all was well and above board Ebanks said they had been able to identify that money had gone missing.
Now FIFA had put in some emergency funding and were conducting a forensic audit on all transactions to see if any other funds have been misappropriated.
I am still very hesitant that any of this is going to be seen as a new broom sweeping clean. There are still too many of the old executive there and Sports Minister Osbourne Bodden has been very clear in his words he will not agree to reinstate the grant until the entire executive changes and all of the individuals associated with the previous regime resign.
So what is keeping them to remain in place?
If there were a couple of bad apples in the barrel would you want to remain in that same barrel?
Ramoon after his election said, “Everyone wants to see change and it is about to happen, but it will be baby steps.”
That doesn’t give me much hope for a fast clean up and that is what is wanted.
It is not only the money worries. The public has lost confidence in CIFA and putting in a few new names isn’t going to clean the floor much if the cleaning is in “baby steps”.
With the also very tainted name of FIFA looking at the books would you be confident for the future of CIFA?
The tragedy is the youth will suffer and their peers have been shown to be corrupt.
It is not enough. By a very long way.
At all annual meeting I know of, financial statements are presented. As CIFA appointed auditors, why were their audited financial Stevens not presented. This don’ t pass the sniff test. The rotten apples remain in the same barrel. The aroma continues.
As an aside from my own substantial investigations going back to 2002 at least $2m has gone sallies.
I rest my case.