Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er claims he has been vin­di­cat­ed now that foot­ball's gov­ern­ing body, Fi­fa, has closed its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions that Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion (AFC), paid bribes to Caribbean of­fi­cials. Warn­er re­signed from Fi­fa and all forms of foot­ball two months af­ter the al­le­ga­tions were made, while Bin Ham­mam was banned for life.

The claim was that bribes were paid dur­ing a Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) meet­ing in Port-of-Spain in May 2011. "Be­cause of the false al­le­ga­tions, my fam­i­ly and I were the sub­jects of much ha­rass­ment and per­se­cu­tion, which un­for­tu­nate­ly con­tin­ue to this day. I sin­cere­ly hope that with this an­nounce­ment, we will fi­nal­ly have some much-de­served re­lief," Warn­er said yes­ter­day.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Michael J Gar­cia, chief ethics in­ves­ti­ga­tor with Fi­fa, has been closed af­ter fail­ing to find new ev­i­dence. Last Ju­ly, Bin Ham­mam's life­time Fi­fa ban was over­turned by the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) due to in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence. He re­mains pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed over al­le­ga­tions of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment while he was AFC pres­i­dent but his le­gal team has launched a chal­lenge to that sus­pen­sion in the Swiss courts.

Gar­cia's de­ci­sion to close the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Caribbean al­le­ga­tions is con­tained in his con­fi­den­tial re­port to Fi­fa. It states: "With re­spect to the events at the CFU con­fer­ence, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­cov­ered no new ma­te­r­i­al proof be­yond the sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings that cul­mi­nat­ed with the CAS de­ci­sion va­cat­ing Mr Bin Ham­mam's ban.

"Ac­cord­ing­ly, the in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry cham­ber has closed this mat­ter, con­sis­tent with the CAS pan­el's guid­ance re­gard­ing new­ly-dis­cov­ered ev­i­dence." Com­ment­ing on this de­vel­op­ment, Warn­er said: "I must re­al­ly ex­tend sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions to my for­mer col­league in Fi­fa for tak­ing the bat­tle all the way to CAS.

"This hap­pened at a time when he was chal­leng­ing for the pres­i­den­cy of Fi­fa. It is un­for­tu­nate that these al­le­ga­tions de­railed Bin Ham­mam's chances which I thought were very good." Warn­er said as a re­sult of the al­le­ga­tions he had been "the sub­ject of abuse by com­men­ta­tors and per­sons in the me­dia with an axe to grind, and those with po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion with the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)."

Warn­er said he had no in­ten­tion of re­turn­ing to Fi­fa, as he had played his role as a mem­ber of the Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive for 29 years. In Ju­ly, a CAS three-man pan­el vot­ed 2-1 in Bin Ham­mam's favour but said his be­hav­iour was "not of the high­est eth­i­cal stan­dard" and that "it is more like­ly than not" that he was the source of cash brought in­to T&T and dis­trib­uted by Warn­er.

CAS said then: "It is a sit­u­a­tion of 'case not proven,' cou­pled with con­cern on the part of the pan­el that the Fi­fa in­ves­ti­ga­tion was not com­plete or com­pre­hen­sive enough to fill the gaps in the record."