Football’s world governing body FIFA is against the appointment of a single arbitrator to hear the dispute between it and the ousted executive of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA).
In its appeal last week to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to set aside FIFA’s decision to appoint a normalisation committee to oversee the daily operations of the TTFA, the lawyers for ousted TTFA executive had proposed that Mark Hovell, a solicitor from Manchester, England, be the sole arbitrator in their case against football’s world governing body FIFA.
Hovell is a highly experienced sports lawyer and insolvency practitioner who specialises in regulatory, governance, commercial and financial matters, across all sports, both in the UK and across the world.
Additionally, he sits regularly as an arbitrator at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and The FA's regulatory commissions. FIFA had until April 14, today, to submit their comments regarding the request - whether they agree to a sole arbitrator deciding matters and Hovell's appointment.
Replying to Antonio De Quesada, the Head of Arbitration on Tuesday, FIFA made their position on the proposal quite clear. The letter said, in part:
“We inform you that we do not agree with the Appellant’s proposal to appoint a sole arbitrator in the matter at hand. Indeed, the present dispute concerns an exceptional situation that has led FIFA to take important governance-related measures in one of its members in accordance with the FIFA Statutes.”
As such, FIFA said they favoured a three-member panel to hear the dispute.
It will now fall to the President of the CAS Appeals Arbitration Division or her deputy to decide how many arbitrators will hear the dispute.
Meantime, the lawyers are expected to file their appeals brief by Friday this week.
The issue began to unfold on March 17 when FIFA General Secretary General Fatma Samoura sent a letter to TTFA General Secretary Ramesh Ramdhan, outlining their concerns about the financial status of the TTFA.
FIFA said its fact-finding mission found, among other concerns, that the “overall condition of financial management and financial governance extremely low or non-existent at the TTFA.
“There are currently no formal internal policies and internal controls in place, such as procurement, the delegation of financial authorities, financial planning and budgeting, effective oversight of funding and management reporting, which are necessary to meet the TTFA’s objectives.”
FIFA also said there is a lack of documented policies and procedures, financial planning and management of statutory liabilities adding that there no short or long-term plan to address the “urgent” situation.
Going further, FIFA expressed the concern that given the situation along with the USD$5.5m debt, the TTFA “faces a very real risk of both insolvency and illiquidity if corrective measures are not applied urgently.”
As such, the normalisation committee has been mandated to run the daily affairs of the TTFA, establish a debt repayment plan that is implementable by the TTFA, as well as review and amend the TTFA statutes and ensure their compliance with FIFA statutes and requires before submitting them to the TTFA Congress for approval.
The committee will also organize and conduct elections of a new TTFA executive for a four-year term.
In response, the ousted executive led by William Wallace contended that the decision to appoint a normalisation committee was unconstitutional and has resorted to having CAS settle the dispute.