I thought all along SIS was a major sponsor. It was the same with Jabloteh and cLICO. Hospedales own and ran the club and CLICO finianced them. What is wrong with that. But now we hearing that SiS are the true owners. I see nothing wrong in them owning the club. We have been asking for local companies to sponsor clubs for the longest while now. The problem here is perception. Why did they not come out and say SIS own the club and Sancho and FS are employed to run the club. Nothing wrong with that. A storm in a tea pot. Why does it always look like they have something to hide.?
You have to ask yourself why they
acted lied like they did... even the Pro League
was referring to Sancho as the owner earlier in the year, and up to a month ago Sancho was
still misrepresenting to the public that he was the club's owner. Some months ago I challenged Harrison on the fact that SIS was really de facto running the club behind the scenes and he denied it. I confronted him here on the forum with Darren Mohamdally was the Central Chairman as proof that Central were pulling strings. His response was that it's only sensible that a corporate sponsor would want to have some kind of say in how the club is run. A paragon of transparency and accountability... these two.
One has to ask the question why this is? While the answer remains unclear, consider that SIS
has been identified as the chief financier (along with Jack Warner) of the PP Governments election campaign five years ago.
Over the first four years of the PP administration, SIS recouped
over half a billion dollars in government contracts, with no "transparency and accountability" into the awarding of those contracts. Your democracy for sale. Of course it goes without saying that it is illegal for a company to be given government contracts as a reward for 'investing' in that government, but this is precisely what seems to have happened, although nobody in the present government seems motivated to investigate it right now.
Now we have this same company which has received apparently illegal government kickbacks purchasing this football team and hiding behind two frontmen... and despite the billions of dollars in government contract, this same club turns around every month with its hand out and asks the Ministry of Sport to give it $80,000 a month in subvention... and criticizing the TTFA and other clubs for their failure to attract corporate sponsorship. They essentially said, "Central worked hard to identify innovative ways of attracting sponsorship, we didn't wait on a handout." Except, they collected that handout from the government, poured money into the club, put Sancho as a figurehead, then the same Sancho, out of the blue was able to negotiate a
settlement payment of the WC bonus by the PP government, then the next thing you know, out of the blue (or so it seemed) he gets appointed MoS. Was this SIS' succession plan... to force the puppet out and negotiate a soft landing spot for him in the MoS?
Now this thing about the "personal payment" requested of CS Vise... this is more than a 'perception' issue, this serious as this kind of thing is illegal. Forget the fact that it's a bribe ("pay me a personal fee and I will help steer Player X to your club"), it's the kind of self-dealing that violates corporate laws... it's what Chuck Blazer did in selling CONCACAF's TV rights to Traffic Sports and setting up a shell company in the Caymans to broker the deal and charge $2 million dollars commission. These are potentially serious charges which if the DPP were to get involved could lead to serious jail time if proven. This type of thing got Harry Redknapp, among others, arrested. This is the behavior that Sancho and Harrison are (accused of) engaging in... all while acting like moral crusaders in local football. But why let any of that worry we? This is much ado about nothing, ent?