Jack Warn­er is among sev­er­al pow­er­ful fig­ures in glob­al foot­ball fac­ing charges over­wide­spread cor­rup­tionover the past two decades, the New York Times re­port­ed.

UP­DATE: Warn­er re­sponds to news of US in­dict­ment

In a me­dia re­lease this morn­ing Warn­er dis­as­so­ci­ates him­self from the in­ves­ti­ga­tions stat­ing that he has left FI­FA and in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball more than four years ago.

"It has been re­port­ed that a num­ber of FI­FA of­fi­cials have been ar­rest­ed in Switzer­land and that at least one raid con­duct­ed by the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tors in Mi­a­mi is be­ing ex­e­cut­ed at what I pre­sume to be CON­CA­CAF of­fices.

"My name is be­ing re­port­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia as be­ing one of those per­sons sought in con­nec­tion with the probe.

"The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go will know that I quit FI­FA and in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball more thanfour years ago and that over the past sev­er­al years I have recom­mit­ted my life to the work of im­prov­ing the lot of every cit­i­zen of every creed and race in this na­tion," Warn­er said.

Reaf­firm­ing his in­no­cence, Warn­er stat­ed that he was af­ford­ed no due process and was not ques­tioned on the mat­ter.

"I have fought fear­less­ly against all forms of in­jus­tice and cor­rup­tion. I have been af­ford­ed no due process and I have not even been ques­tioned in this mat­ter. I re­it­er­ate that I am in­no­cent of any charges. I have walked away from the pol­i­tics of world foot­ball to im­merse my­self in the im­prove­ment of lives in this coun­try where I shall, God will­ing, die," he said.

Warn­er claimed that FI­FA mat­ters no longer con­cern him. How­ev­er he not­ed the con­tro­ver­sial up­com­ing elec­tions.

"The ac­tions of FI­FA no longer con­cern me. I can­not help but note how­ev­er that these cross-bor­der co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tions come at a time when FI­FA is as­sem­bled for elec­tions to se­lect a Pres­i­dent who is uni­ver­sal­ly dis­liked by the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. At times such as this it is my ex­pe­ri­ence that the large world pow­ers typ­i­cal­ly take ac­tions to af­fect world foot­ball. World foot­ball is an enor­mous in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness," he said.

Warn­er added that his sole fo­cus is now on the peo­ple of T&T and he will con­tin­ue with his po­lit­i­cal life.

"That is no longer my con­cern. My sole fo­cus at this stage of my life is on the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I wish to ad­vise the hun­dreds of thou­sands of per­sons who sup­port the ILP that my com­mit­ment to them and to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go is un­daunt­ed and can nev­er be bro­ken," he said.

He lat­er post­ed a video to Face­book re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tions.

(func­tion(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getEle­ments­By­Tag­Name(s)[0]; if (d.getEle­ment­ById(id)) re­turn; js = d.cre­ateEle­ment(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//con­nect.face­book.net/en_US/sdk.js#xf­bml=1&ver­sion=v2.3"; fjs.par­entN­ode.in­sert­Be­fore(js, fjs);}(doc­u­ment, 'script', 'face­book-jss­dk'));#Jack­Warn­er re­sponds.....Post­ed by Jack Warn­er (Of­fi­cial Page) on Wednes­day, May 27, 2015

Warn­er faces charges and ex­tra­di­tion

Sev­er­al charged are of­fi­cials of theF�d�ra­tion In­ter­na­tionale de Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (FI­FA), the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­spon­si­ble for the reg­u­la­tion and pro­mo­tion of soc­cer world­wide, as well as lead­ing of­fi­cials of oth­er soc­cer gov­ern­ing bod­ies that op­er­ate un­der the FI­FA um­brel­la. Warn­er is a for­mer vice pres­i­dent of FI­FA.

In ad­di­tion to se­nior soc­cer of­fi­cials, the in­dict­ment al­so named sports-mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tives from the Unit­ed States and South Amer­i­ca who are ac­cused of pay­ing more than $150 mil­lion in bribes and kick­backs in ex­change for me­dia deals as­so­ci­at­ed with ma­jor soc­cer tour­na­ments.

The soc­cer of­fi­cials charged are Jack Warn­er,Jef­frey Webb, Ed­uardoLi,Eu­ge­nio Figuere­do, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Rafael Es­quiv­el, Jos� Maria Marin and Nicol�s Leoz.

The Times said much of the U.S. en­quiry was fo­cused on the Con­ca­caf re­gion, which gov­erns soc­cer in the North Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The con­fed­er­a­tion's Trinida­di­an for­mer boss Warn­er was reg­u­lar­ly dogged by ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion be­fore he re­signed in 2011, at which point FI­FA ter­mi­nat­ed its in­ves­ti­ga­tions of him.

The U.S. crim­i­nal case will al­low courts to look in­to mat­ters that in the past had been in­ves­ti­gat­ed main­ly by FI­FA's own in­ter­nal ethics com­mit­tee, an­swer­able to it­self.

U.S. law gives its courts broad pow­ers to in­ves­ti­gate crimes com­mit­ted by for­eign­ers on for­eign soil if mon­ey pass­es through U.S. banks or oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty takes place there.

DOJ an­nounces in­dict­ments

A state­ment from theU.S. De­part­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ)said that Warn­er andWebb–the for­mer and cur­rent and pres­i­dents of CON­CA­CAF, the con­ti­nen­tal con­fed­er­a­tion un­der FI­FA head­quar­tered in the Unit­ed States � are among the soc­cer of­fi­cials charged with rack­e­teer­ing and bribery of­fens­es.

The DOJ web­site said:"The in­dict­ment al­leges that, be­tween 1991 and the present, the de­fen­dants and their co-con­spir­a­tors cor­rupt­ed the en­ter­prise by en­gag­ing in var­i­ous crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing fraud, bribery and mon­ey laun­der­ing. Two gen­er­a­tions of soc­cer of­fi­cials abused their po­si­tions of trust for per­son­al gain, fre­quent­ly through an al­liance with un­scrupu­lous sports mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tives who shut out com­peti­tors and kept high­ly lu­cra­tive con­tracts for them­selves through the sys­tem­at­ic pay­ment of bribes and kick­backs. All told, the soc­cer of­fi­cials are charged with con­spir­ing to so­lic­it and re­ceive well over $150 mil­lion in bribes and kick­backs in ex­change for their of­fi­cial sup­port of the sports mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tives who agreed to make the un­law­ful pay­ments.

The in­dict­ment re­lates to bribes and kick­backs in­volv­ing the­FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fiers in the CON­CA­CAF re­gion, the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup, the CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­ons League, among oth­er events.

"Oth­er al­leged schemes re­late to the pay­ment and re­ceipt of bribes and kick­backs in con­nec­tion with the spon­sor­ship of CBF by a ma­jor U.S. sports­wear com­pa­ny, the se­lec­tion of the host coun­try for the 2010 World Cup and the 2011 FI­FA pres­i­den­tial elec­tion," the DOJ state­ment said.

Two of Warn­er's sons, Daryll and Dar­i­an Warn­er­were iden­ti­fied among those who­plead­ed guilty, in Ju­ly and Oc­to­ber of 2013 re­spec­tive­ly,to wire fraud, wire fraud con­spir­a­cy, mon­ey laun­der­ing con­spir­a­cy and the struc­tur­ing of fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions.

"Daryan Warn­er for­feit­ed over $1.1 mil­lion around the time of his plea and has agreed to pay a sec­ond for­fei­ture mon­ey judg­ment at the time of sen­tenc­ing," the state­ment said.

For­mer CON­CA­CAF gen­er­al sec­re­tary and a for­mer FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber­Charles "Chuck" Blaz­er, an­oth­er de­fen­dant named by the DOJ, "waived in­dict­ment and plead­ed guilty to a 10-count in­for­ma­tion charg­ing him with rack­e­teer­ing con­spir­a­cy, wire fraud con­spir­a­cy, mon­ey laun­der­ing con­spir­a­cy, in­come tax eva­sion and fail­ure to file a Re­port of For­eign Bank and Fi­nan­cial Ac­counts (FBAR)."

On Wednes­day, U.S.At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Loret­ta Lynch said,"While at least one FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive served as CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent with­out pay, there was lit­tle al­tru­ism in­volved, as he alone is al­leged to have tak­en more than $10 mil­lion in bribes over a 19-year pe­ri­od and amassed a per­son­al for­tune from his ill-got­ten gains."

Lynch was de­liv­er­ing re­marks at a press con­fer­ence an­nounc­ing the charges.

Of­fi­cials ar­rest­ed in Zurich

Two crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion­sare un­der way, with sev­en se­nior of­fi­cials ar­rest­ed in Zurich on US charges.Sep­a­rate­ly, Swiss pros­e­cu­tors have launched a crim­i­nal case in­to the bids for the 2018 and 2022 world cups, to be held in Rus­sia and Qatar re­spec­tive­ly.

Swiss po­licear­rest­ed some of the most pow­er­ful fig­ures in glob­al soc­cer on Wednes­day.

Those ar­rest­ed did not in­clude Sepp Blat­ter, the Swiss head of soc­cer's mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar gov­ern­ing body FI­FA, but in­clud­ed sev­er­al of those just be­low him in the hi­er­ar­chy of the wealth­i­est and most pow­er­ful sports body on earth.

The ar­rests by plain-clothes po­lice were made at dawn at a plush Zurich ho­tel where FI­FA of­fi­cials are stay­ing ahead of a vote this week where they have been ex­pect­ed to eas­i­ly anoint Blat­ter for a fifth term in of­fice.

Swiss pros­e­cu­tors said they had opened crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against uniden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als on sus­pi­cion of mis­man­age­ment and mon­ey laun­der­ing re­lat­ed to the award­ing of rights to host the 2018 World Cup in Qatar and the 2022 World Cup in Rus­sia.

Da­ta and doc­u­ments were seized from com­put­ers at FI­FA's Zurich head­quar­ters.

The Swiss Fed­er­al Of­fice of Jus­tice (FOJ) did not im­me­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fy which of­fi­cials were ar­rest­ed pend­ing ex­tra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States, but me­dia re­ports said they in­clud­ed Jef­frey Webb and Eu­ge­nio Figuere­do, both FI­FA vice-pres­i­dents.

The of­fi­cials were sus­pect­ed by U.S. in­ves­ti­ga­tors of hav­ing re­ceived or paid bribes to­tal­ing mil­lions of dol­lars, the Swiss FOJ said, while the me­dia and pro­mo­tions ex­ec­u­tives were ac­cused of pay­ing the kick­backs.

"The US At­tor­ney's Of­fice for the East­ern Dis­trict of New York is in­ves­ti­gat­ing these in­di­vid­u­als on sus­pi­cion of the ac­cep­tance of bribes and kick­backs be­tween the ear­ly 1990s and the present day," the state­ment said.

"The bribery sus­pects - rep­re­sen­ta­tives of sports me­dia and sports pro­mo­tion firms - are al­leged to have been in­volved in schemes to make pay­ments to the soc­cer func­tionar­ies - del­e­gates of FI­FA and oth­er func­tionar­ies of FI­FA sub-or­gan­i­sa­tions - to­tal­ing more than US$100 mil­lion."

FI­FA un­der cloud

?

A spokesman from FI­FA spoke at a press con­fer­ence arranged in re­sponse to the break­ing news said it was "a sad day" for FI­FA.

The in­ter­na­tion­al gov­ern­ing body of soc­cer col­lects bil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue, most­ly from spon­sor­ship and tele­vi­sion rights for World Cups.

It has per­sis­tent­ly been dogged by re­ports of cor­rup­tion which it says it in­ves­ti­gates it­self, but un­til now it has es­caped ma­jor crim­i­nal cas­es in any coun­try.

In par­tic­u­lar, the de­ci­sion to award the World Cup to Qatar, a tiny desert coun­try with no do­mes­tic tra­di­tion of soc­cer, was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised by soc­cer of­fi­cials in West­ern coun­tries. FI­FA was forced to ac­knowl­edge that it is too hot to play soc­cer there in the sum­mer when the cup is tra­di­tion­al­ly held, forc­ing sched­ules around the globe to be rewrit­ten to move the cup.

FI­FA hired a for­mer U.S. pros­e­cu­tor to ex­am­ine al­le­ga­tions of bribery over the award­ing of the World Cups to Qatar and Rus­sia, but has re­fused to pub­lish his re­port, re­leas­ing on­ly a sum­ma­ry in which it said there were no ma­jor ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties. The in­ves­ti­ga­tor quit, say­ing his re­port had been mis­char­ac­terised.

Sources: NY Times, Reuters, BBC