PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):
Cricket West Indies (CWI) President, Dr Kishore Shallow, has poured cold water over claims by chartered accountant Mariano Browne that its recently released annual report is a “PR document”.
Browne, an economist and CEO at UWI’s Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business, gave the report a failing grade last week, saying that it did not give a clear understanding of the operations of West Indies cricket.
He maintained that the report failed to provide necessary details on how the money at CWI was being utilised.
“As a comprehensive report on the state of West Indies cricket, it would get zero. On the basis of a financial statement to give me an insight, it would get a minus. In terms of a PR document, it will get a plus, because it’s PR,” Browne said at the time.
However, in response, Shallow said Browne had made statements from an uninformed position, as he had not read the audited financial statements made available by CWI.
When questioned, Browne admitted he had not seen CWI’s audited financial statements.
“One of the things I don’t quite appreciate and have a very low tolerance for is when people with a fair reputation in other areas come and want to make comments as loosely as Mr Browne did.
“The gentleman goes in the media and speaks with authority, or so he feels, on a matter and he didn’t even do research. He did not even go to the website and see that there are the audited statements there,” Shallow said.
CEO at CWI, Chris Dehring, also refuted Browne’s suggestion that the financial report was not up to par.
He maintained the report was “a very solid report that contains an incredible amount of information about all the activities of Cricket West Indies”.
“You can’t look on one single annual report and hope to capture all of the detail and work and documents that support that,” Dehring said.
“When you are making a public document, you’re basically capturing elements from a body of work that has taken place across 12 months and trying to give you a flavour of what has taken place.”
