On the second day of the trial of former football executives Canover Watson and Bruce Blake, the court heard evidence from CONCACAF’s Head of Finance, David Cruz, who in 2013 processed more than $1.5 million in payments to a Panamanian company allegedly controlled by Watson.
The Crown alleges that Watson submitted three false invoices for sports equipment that was never delivered to steal $1.54 million dollars from the regional football confederation and that Blake helped him move and launder the stolen money.
Cruz, a finance supervisor at the time, testified on Monday that the payments were made on the instruction of Enrique Sanz, then-secretary general at CONCACAF, but that there was no record of the organisation ever receiving any of the goods they paid for.
Cruz told the court that he knew Watson in 2013 because the former Cayman Islands Football Association (CIFA) treasurer served on CONCACAF’s finance committee when the payments were made.
However, Cruz said he was not aware of any affiliation between Watson and Forward Sports in Panama, the company that had submitted three invoices for sports equipment in the amounts of $750,000, $148,000 and $642,000.
The equipment was ostensibly going to be used in grassroots programmes in CONCACAF’s national member associations and during the Gold Cup.
Cruz said Sanz and Watson made the decision to buy the equipment and that he had assumed they were involved in the grassroots programme, based on email communication about the order they were copied into.
In an email instructing Cruz to make the payments, Sanz had attached the three invoices together with a bill of lading that, the jury was shown, related to an entirely different invoice.
The finance supervisor said he did not question the three invoices but confirmed that they had not been part of the organisation’s budget.
Cruz said he only checked whether any items had been received in return for the payments when a member of CONCACAF in charge of executing the development programmes asked what had been ordered and delivered.
Cashflow spreadsheet on Watson’s computer
The Crown had told the jury earlier that day that investigators had seized a tablet computer, a laptop and several storage devices during the search of Watson’s premises.
On the tablet, they recovered a document titled ‘Forward Activity’ created by Watson that details various cash inflows and outflows, including a payment of $1.54 million received from CONCACAF. Outgoing payments covered, among other things, $600,000 to CIFA, which it is alleged was later presented by Watson as a loan from Forward Sports using a fake loan agreement.
According to Crown prosecutor Eloise Marshall, QC, the document shows the evidence includes not just the documentation provided by banks and emails, but that “even Mr. Watson was keeping a tally of what he was spending that stolen money on”.
During the interview with police following his arrest, Watson stayed silent, the jury heard.
Instead, he provided a written statement denying committing any offences and stating that he would remain silent, because he distrusted the investigators and doubted their impartiality.
Blake, in contrast, did provide answers in three police interviews, during which “he continued to deny any involvement in anything dishonest, saying it was all Mr. Watson and Mr. [Jeffrey] Webb,” the prosecutor said.
She said Blake told police that he knew about the Panama companies, believing it to be a partnership between Watson and Forward Sports.
But, Marshall said, Blake lied during questioning when he stated he had informed CIFA’s auditors about Watson’s interest in the companies.
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