The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Secretary General Carl Oliver said it was never his intention to “own” the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations, nor did he at anytime apply to secure the Memorandum of Articles for the association to become a company.

Oliver, who is seeking to become the first vice president on the slate of Rosamunde Carey during the BAAA elections of officers on Saturday, was refuting claims by former BAAA president Mike Sands on Tuesday that he, Oliver, “owned” the BAAA.

In setting the record straight on a document of the Memorandum of Articles that was submitted to the Attorney General that has the BAAA listed as a company, Sands said “it was Mr Carl Oliver who claimed that he owns the BAAA in light of the fact that he had reserved the name of the BAAA in his own rights, which obviously caused a stir among the members at the time.”

“I then activated a process to ensure that the federation would not be owned by anyone individual, but instead to establish a non-profit company. It was never the intention to establish a constitution.”

In response to the allegations, Oliver told The Tribune that from the inception of the matter at hand, it was only discovered that the BAAA was set up as a company when Carey went to the Registrar General to collect the document for the new constitution of the BAAA that was ratified by the members and filed in the Attorney General’s office.

“She found out that there was this document that had the BAAA filed as a company under Mike Sands and Philippa Arnett-Willie and I suspect Drumeco Archer had some involvement in pushing the document forward,” Oliver said. “They said they did it because Carl Oliver owned the BAAA, which was absolutely incorrect. I don’t own the BAAA.”

In clarifying his position on the matter, Oliver said around 2011-12, they were putting together a team to run against Sands and in his research, he discovered that the BAAA was not registered in the Bahamas. He went to the general meeting and advised the administration and general body, indicating that it needed to be addressed.

“We had a heated meeting and some of them said ‘yes, the federation is registered and that the IAAF would have sanctioned the constitution,” Oliver said. “So what I did and this was based on just watching those talk shows, I saw where some people register names or reserving company names.

“If a new company starting up wanted that name, they would have to buy it from the person who reserved it. With good intentions when I exposed that the BAAA wasn’t registered, I went to the Registrar General’s office after consulting with the late Dwayne Jennings, Shaun Miller and George Cleare about reserving the name so it is protected.

“Reserving the name was one thing, but you had to get it registered with the Attorney General’s office and to do that you had to provide the Memorandum of Association, Articles of Association and get a lawyer to prepare that. There was a cost to that and there was no way in the world I was doing that.”

Oliver said he was told by the Registrar General’s office that if those criteria were not met within 60 days, the name would no longer be reserved.

“I reserved the BAAA name. Anyone can do that. It’s free of charge. It never went beyond that point,” Oliver stated.

“So after six months, it went back to the general public. So I don’t know how Mike Sands could say that I owned the BAAA. I never did. I only reserved the name. Carl Oliver reserving the name of the federation never came up and if it didm it would have been addressed during my campaign when I won in 2012. When I became secretary general in 2012, there was no discussion on it. It never happened because I never owned the BAAA.”

Oliver said it’s just so sad on the week leading up to the elections that Archer and Sands are trying to distract attention on what Archer claimed to be an egregious art on his behalf. He posted that in a voice note that he sent out.

“I never owned no federation so why are you trying to protect it from me?” Oliver asked. “Based on the documents they sent in, it was registered in 2014, so obviously the document that they submitted went in before. We see some inconsistent dates on the documents.

“The general body didn’t know anything about it and the executive body didn’t know anything about it. I told Drumeco in the last general meeting we had, if this issue was discussed, you need to submit the meetings because at that time, I was secretary general. I don’t remember it ever being discussed.”

Oliver said it was only discovered that the BAAA was listed as a company after Carey went to collect the document, which she had paid for. When she opened it, she realised that it was not the document that the BAAA had ratified, but one that was on file in the Office of the Registrar General.

Arnett-Willie, a former assistant treasurer of the BAAA, has since refuted that she had anything to do with the document, questioning the legitimacy of her signature when she was not in fact a member of the BAAA at the time. She claimed that she never signed the document with Sands.