The Executive Board was astonished on August 19 when Sam Sloan, five days after the conclusion of his first meeting, posted the following on at least six newsgroups.  His claims were seriously in error, as he would have learned if he had checked them with the board or the Executive Director before posting, as he should have. 

"Standards of Conduct for the USCF Executive Board," approved by the delegates, states: "(1) Executive Board members are expected to contribute to the functioning of the Board as a cohesive unit, with information flowing comfortably among all its members. Actions that interfere with comfortable and open communication among all Board members should be avoided."

By going public with serious charges without discussing them with the Board, Sloan violated the above standard.  Had he allowed others in USCF leadership to comment first, he would have spared both himself and USCF considerable embarrassment. 

Virtually All USCF Financial Records have been Destroyed

When I ran for election to the USCF Executive Board, one of my key campaign promises was that I would study the USCF financial records to
determine how and why the USCF has lost nearly two million dollars since 1999 and to investigate the possibility that some of this money
may be recovered.

Though USCF management has left much to be desired during most of this period, the total lost was less that half of what Sloan states. 

After I was elected, at my first meeting of the board, I politely asked to be given certain documents, such as the Truong correspondence
and contracts under which the USCF ultimately paid $39,000 to Truong and the AF4C contracts under which Eric Anderson agreed to sponsor the
US Championship.

In each case, I was informed that the documents could not be found.

He was informed that the office was having difficulty locating the contracts he wanted.  Both were subsequently found and sent to the Board.  The contract which Sloan refers to as paying "$39,000 to Truong" actually resulted in the payment of about $19,500, none of which went to Truong.

Finally, Executive Director Bill Hall confessed that virtually nothing from the former USCF office in New Windsor New York had ever reached
the new USCF office in Crossville. The rest of the board was obviously well aware of this. None of the
other board members expressed surprise at this starting revelation.

We didn't express surprise because that's not what Bill Hall said.  The records were not well organized but no one suggested that they had disappeared.

I have since been asking around trying to find out how this could possibly have happened. The best explanation that I can come up with
thus far is that after the vote by the old USCF board to move from New Windsor, New York to Crossville, Tennessee, it was discovered that the
USCF did not have the money to hire professional movers to move all the old archives and financial records from the New Windsor offices to
Crossville. As a result, a team of high school students led by Jay Sabine, son of Harry Sabine, former USCF Vice-President and the
architect of the move to Crossville, was dispatched to New York to move all the stuff. Upon arriving in New Windsor, they found that the
quantity of material that they were expected to move was huge, far greater than they had anticipated.

USCF did use professional movers.  Jay Sabine has never been to New Windsor in his life. 

They were faced with a dilemma: They knew that the new incoming board  was opposed to the move to Crossville. They knew that if the move was
not completed by the time that the new board took office, the new board would reverse the move and would stay in New Windsor.

Therefore, they had no choice in the matter. The only thing left to do  is to throw all the USCF files and records into the local garbage
dump, which is what they did.

There is only one little problem with this, which is that the destruction of corporate financial records is a crime which may be
punishable by up to ten years in prison.

There is a bigger problem: no such thing ever happened.

We need to ask the following questions:

1. What was the role of USCF President Beatriz Marinello in this? She had hired herself to supervise the move to Crossville. Was she aware
of the dumping of the records? Did she order it to be done? Did she witness it? Did she participate in it?

2. The same questions must be asked of Grant Perks, who was Chief Financial Officer at the time. Perks has been extremely upset at the
results of the election just concluded. Perks has been doing everything in his power to stop Sam Sloan from being certified as a
member of the board. Now we understand the reason. Perks does not want to spend time in prison and he obviously realizes that once Sam Sloan
gets on the board he is going to find out about this and make it public.

3. Similar questions must be asked of Randy Bauer, who is always writing about how he is Budget Director of the State of Iowa. Did
Bauer know about this? After Bauer lost his campaign for re-election to the board in August 2005, he became Chairman of the Finance
Committee, a position he still holds. Bauer must have been aware of this problem. Why has he remained silent?

4. The same questions may be asked of CPA William Brock, who was a member of the Finance Committee until he resigned in protest to
Sloan's election? Is this the reason why Brock fought so long and hard to stop Sloan from being elected? Is this why he resigned?

We cannot ask these questions of Tim Hanke, who was USCF VP of Finance when these events occurred, because Hanke has skipped town, vanished
and disappeared. Is this the reason why Mr. Hanke is no longer available.

Sloan's public speculation, with no evidence, that the above people may have committed a criminal act is outrageous.

Sloan later apologized to Jay Sabine and Grant Perks for his comments, but not to the others named. These apologies are very unusual for him; usually when proven wrong he simply changes the subject.

In view of these developments, it is not a surprise that the new accounting firm hired by the USCF in Crossville still has not produced a certified financial statement for the recently completed 2005-2006 fiscal year. It has been a standard rule that the CPA Report must be ready in time for the USCF delegates meeting in August. This year, the delegates were just given a small paper printout showing a small loss and no details. Is this the reason why a certified financial statement has not been prepared? Will it ever be prepared?

The certified CPA audited report was distributed at the annual meetings as usual, but Sloan apparently didn't notice.  The lack of such a report would have been a major issue, yet Sloan said nothing about this at the Board meeting in Oak Brook the day after the delegates meeting.

Where exactly is the garbage dump or landfill located where the USCF Financial Records were dumped? Can we still go to the garbage dump and
possibly locate some useful records?

Is it possible that some records were left behind in the basement of the old building in New Windsor and that the new tenants have not
bothered to throw them out? Can they be recovered?

What about the computer hard drives where some records were maintained? Have the computers been moved to Crossville or were they
dumped too? Can those records be recovered?

The records have all been located in Crossville, as expected.

Why has the new board been stonewalling about this problem? Why has Sam Sloan been asked to hold off on revealing this?

Sloan sees himself as a crusader exposing the truth, and is fond of alleging attempts to cover up supposedly incriminating facts.

These are some of the questions that we need to be asking.

Sam Sloan

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