THE University of Technology has escaped major sanctions from the Fair Trading Commission (FTC), following its probe into the “no-show” of several top athletes — including former 100m world record holder Asafa Powell — who were billed to appear at the UTech Track & Field Classic on April 18 this year.

According to a ‘Consent Agreement’ that has been obtained by the Observer, Utech has been ordered to issue a public apology and pay the FTC the sum of $126,333.30 by way of costs incurred in the investigation of the complaint (general public).

“Pursuant to Rule 8 of the Fair Competition (Notices and Procedures) Regulations 2000, the Respondent shall within thirty (30) days of the date hereof issue a public apology, to be drafted and approved by the staff of the Commission, at the centre or top right hand corner of the first or second page of the Sports section in the Jamaica Observer newspaper for two consecutive weeks,” the consent agreement states.

“The wording and dimensions of the apology shall be according to the exact specifications of the Commission as contained in the Schedule and in accordance with the example attached to this Agreement.

“A draft of the Public Apology must be submitted to the staff of the Commission for vetting and approval before it is sent to the Press for publication,” the document added.

Executive director of the FTC, David Miller, indicated that Utech will have to run the public apology within 30 days of the signing of the ‘Consent Agreement’, set to be inked between the FTC chairman and Utech’s chairman in early January.

“I’m hoping to have it signed in the first week of January as soon as the holiday finishes,” Miller told the Observer in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

When the probe was launched in April, Miller reportedly said if the allegations proved to be true, it would constitute a breach of the Fair Competitions Act, which upon conviction in court could result in a maximum fine of $5 million.

“We agreed that we would not take the matter to court… you see, it is the court that imposes a fine… In light of the fact that Utech has agreed with us that they may have breached the act, we decided to enter into a consent agreement, which is what you have there. As such, there will be no fine,” the FTC boss said Thursday.

“What we have is an agreement to change their behaviour and to publicise the matter in such a way that others do not commit the same kind of breach,” Miller said, hinting that fines were avoided due to special circumstances.

“There were certain other factors that came into consideration. For example, the possibility of last-minute injuries to athletes and things like that, and in working together to come up with an agreement, we sought to find ways to avoid such an occurrence.

“In the future, when advertisements are created, certain things ought to be included in them to put the public on guard to look out for certain things,” he added.

The FTC completed its investigations into the “no-show” of athletes at the UtechTrack & Field Classic in August. That is approximately five months after they took up the case on April 22 following public complaints.

“After August we were ironing out the terms of the agreement,” Miller disclosed.

It was advertised in the print and electronic media that top athletes, including Powell, Trinidad and Tobago’s Darrell Brown and Olympic 400m silver medallist Shericka Williams would have participated at the meet, but they did not.

Powell’s coach, Stephen Francis, withdrew the athlete on the day of the meet; Brown had not fully recovered from an operation done after the Beijing Olympics, while Williams was mourning the death of her grandmother.

News later surfaced that Powell was rehabilitating from an ankle injury, which he subsequently aggravated while anchoring Jamaica’s 4×100 relay team at the Penn Relays on April 25.

In the meantime, the FTC hopes other organisers of track and field meets will learn from the mistakes of Utech.

“We would hope that others don’t commit the same breach and we’d hope that others will see the public apology and other educational material that we (FTC) put out there, and that they will check with our website for information and call us ahead of time if they have any doubts as to what they are doing as many business enterprises do these days,” he stated.