A former employee of Forward Sports International Management, the company allegedly used by Canover Watson to send false invoices for $1.54 million in sporting goods that were never delivered to CONCACAF, testified this week that she knew of only two containers and some smaller orders that were shipped to the regional football governing body.
Asked by the prosecution if Forward Sports had regularly supplied to CONCACAF, Juliet Osbourne said, “Regularly, no.” She just remembered one grassroots programme order and some discussion about cones.
In terms of other orders, Osbourne said, “I remember sending pro forma invoices for potential orders. But I cannot remember exactly what came or if anything came.”
The Crown says Forward Sports International Management was secretly owned by former Cayman and CONCACAF football executive Canover Watson.
While at CONCACAF, Watson set up a Panama-based distribution company, Forward Sports Inc, together with Shakeel Khawaja, a representative for the Pakistan-based sports equipment maker that received orders from the football confederation.
Watson is alleged to have set up a second company he fully controlled, Forward Sports International Management, without the knowledge of CONCACAF, Forward Sports or Khawaja. This company, it is claimed, then sent invoices for which no goods were ever supplied.
Trove of documents
Defence counsel Dapinder Singh, QC, took the witness and the jury through email chains and reams of invoices. In relation to Watson, the defence is trying to make the case that the prosecution had been selective in presenting orders, invoices and related communications.
If the whole history of quotes, orders, invoices and shipping documents, as well as email correspondence, were presented in chronological or sequential order, Singh claimed, a different picture would emerge.
While the prosecution bundle of documents presented to the jury runs at about 200 pages, Watson’s defence bundle is five times larger. By the end of the trial, the jury is likely to have gone through almost 2,000 pages of contracts, invoices, emails and other files.
During the two days of testimony, Osbourne was questioned about her work, which she said related first to helping Forward Sports with shipments to CONCACAF and the onward distribution of ordered sporting goods to member football associations. She then helped Forward Sports sales manager Khawaja with building the sport equipment manufacturer’s brand.
Role of Watson
The jury heard that Watson had recommended Osbourne, his former girlfriend, to Khawaja because of her experience in shipping and sales.
Osbourne, who in 2013 and 2014 worked full-time at Seaboard Marine, said she was initially contacted by Watson to help with a shipment from Pakistan.
She said she had worked part-time, mostly in the evenings, with both Watson and Khawaja, whom she described as the international arm of the Pakistan-based sports equipment maker.
Osbourne said she did not know what the exact structure of the arrangement between Watson and Khawaja was or if Watson had ever invested any money in the Panama-based company used to sell sporting goods to CONCACAF and national football associations.
She said she believed Watson was tasked with helping Khawaja get everything set up in the Caribbean and potentially South America.
Company not successful
Osbourne said, after helping with the first shipment, her role was to build relationships with local football associations or anyone else who would need to buy sporting gear produced by Forward Sports.
While some smaller orders had been placed in the Bahamas, St. Lucia or Domenica, the strategy to attract further orders with sponsorship agreements was not very successful.
She said, “The idea was that Forward Sports would provide sponsorship to provide football gear for free in the hope to build the brand and it becoming more accepted.”
Based on greater brand awareness, the plan was to build the business. But none of the relationships with football associations really took off, Osbourne said.
Invoice trail
The defence spent most of its cross-examination of Osbourne tracing a first production order for 30,000 soccer uniform sets and 30,000 footballs worth US$750,000. It was signed off by CONCACAF General Secretary Enrique Sanz on 1 April 2013.
The order was followed by an invoice for $375,000 for 10,000 soccer uniform sets and 10,000 footballs sent in April by Watson to CONCACAF.
A second invoice for, what the defence suggested were the remaining 20,000 soccer uniform sets and 20,000 footballs for $750,000, was sent in September and paid by CONCACAF in October.
The prosecution pointed out that if the two invoices were related to the same order, the unit prices and total price had changed and taken together now amounted to $1.125 million instead of $750,000.
According to an email shown to the witness and the jury, the second $750,000 order was then changed in November 2013.
In the email, Watson informed Khawaja that after speaking to CONCACAF President Jeffrey Webb, “we have decided” to use the second part of the order for equipment including bibs, cones and football goals, because the first 15,000 uniforms had been received and would take months to distribute.
By that time, CONCACAF had already paid $375,000 for the first shipment of goods, which had been paid and received in August 2013, according to a shipping invoice shown by the prosecution, as well as three other invoices to Forward Sports International Management for $750,000, $148,500 and $642,800, all paid in early October 2013.
Osbourne said she did not know, when asked by the prosecution if she could explain why an order changed and approved on 30 Nov. was dated 30 Sept., or why it was billed to and paid by CONCACAF in October but the invoice was only issued in December.
She also testified that she did not know about $1.54 million in orders or any payments received by Forward Sports in Panama.
Further emails shown to the court then indicated that the order was changed again because Khawaja in December 2013 said the production of goals in Pakistan was not yet ISO-certified and goals would have to bought at great expense in Germany.
Khawaja asked for the delivery of goals to be postponed to July 2014 and the goals to be replaced by other items.
Documents presented to the court then showed, without much explanation, that Watson, given two options by Khawaja, decided to replace the 150 football goals with 9,000 sports bags.
The chopped and changed order was then beset by problems paying Forward Sports in Pakistan for the production, shipping issues and customs hold-ups, based on correspondence presented by the defence.
By July 2014, internal discussions still ensued about the replaced bags, as Forward Sports had produced 13,000 bags and Khawaja wanted CONCACAF to pay for the excess, claiming that more bags were needed because the junior bags were too small for some of the older kids.
CONCACAF looking for equipment
Meanwhile, CONCACAF staff was looking for the $1.54 million worth of sporting equipment the organisation had apparently ordered and paid for months earlier.
CONCACAF’s Jonathan Martinez attempted to track down the ordered sporting equipment in March 2013 in emails to Osbourne, asking specifically about the delivery of football goals.
The defence for Watson argued that order changes and shipping complications were completely normal and that senior management decisions, such as replacing football goals with sporting bags, would not always filter down to people on the ground, like Martinez.
Martinez testified earlier in the trial that none of the goods ordered in the allegedly false invoices were ever received by CONCACAF.
WhatsApp messages between Osbourne and Watson
In Whatsapp messages read to the court, Osbourne told Watson about the apparent non-deliveries mentioned by Martinez.
“I am concerned about Jonathan’s email,” she wrote in a message. “He has invoices with certain items he is looking for. We really should have known about this before getting Shakeel to change order and shape the order according to what is expected.”
Questioned by the prosecution about the message, she said it was the first time she had heard about order discrepancies. She added that she did not know the orders had already been paid for and, as such, “shaping” an order just meant adjusting it to what can be delivered.
She then wrote to Watson that she had spoken to Khawaja, who said the goals could be delivered in July. “Told him we will do the goals but he wants your say so. Backorder and scheduling will be reason to Jonathan [Martinez].”
In another message, in June, she informed Watson: “We still have to reconcile our quantities with Jonathan[‘s] expected quantities. Eg the goals that he thinks we ordered on their accounting invoice and paid for [versus] what was actually ordered.”
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