By Neto Baptiste
Vice President of the Leeward Islands Cricket Board (LICB), Carlisle Powell, and lone challenger to incumbent Enoch Lewis ahead of the body’s electoral AGM on June 22, has labelled allegations levelled against him as serious, adding that he has engaged the services of a lawyer.
Powell’s revelation comes just days after Lewis, during an on air interview on Observer Radio’s Good Morning Jojo sports show, accused his now vice president of taking an overdraft facility in his own name for the Leeward Islands Cricket board during his tenure as president between 2000 and 2005.
“When I got it, the first thing I did after listening to it a couple of times was to share it with my sons, one of whom studied law, and then I sent it to my lawyer. I am taking legal advice on the matter and I want to tell you that the clip was played on your radio station, so if my lawyer indeed decides that it is slanderous then Mr Lewis will be given an opportunity to prove the slander.
“I find it curious — and I am not going to say a lot about this because I have referred it to my lawyer — that even though you tried to in a way, as an expert host to get him to see that he probably went over the line, he stuck to his guns,” he said.
Powell, a Nevisian by birth, denied the allegations while also labelling Lewis’ assertions as ‘scary’.
“How is it that a president of an organisation can set up a $100,000 overdraft in his name, not for the organisation? He said it was set up in my name and that is the part that is scary, and that the board was not aware. My vice president for a long time was a person name Zorol Barthley and I haven’t yet asked him if he knows about that $100,000 overdraft because he and I converse a lot and this is coming up now and Mr Lewis is going to have to prove that that is a fact,” he said.
The former CPL Operations Manager who has promised to re-introduce the annual LICB three day, one day and T20 tournaments if elected, went on to add that the alleged overdraft has not come up on any credit checks or credit history carried out on his behalf.
“I have never had an overdraft in my life in my personal capacity, so how am I going to go to a bank and say ‘listen, I represent the Leeward Islands Board but I want you to give me a $100,000 overdraft in my own name?’
“What is curious about this is that just a couple of years later when I went to get a fairly sizable loan to build my own home, that didn’t show up on any of the enquiries from the banks and I didn’t get the loan from the same bank, I got it from a different bank to build my house and it didn’t show up that I had an overdraft of $100,00,” Powell said.
Powell has also promised to introduce ‘dedicated cricket training programmes (weekly days for practice /S&C) in each member territory for all age groups and genders to aid growth of the game’, among other initiatives.
