Asha Javeed

Jack Warn­er, Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent and T&T's Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter, has scoffed at cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions made against him by Lord Tries­man, the for­mer Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and Eng­land 2018 chair­man. "First of all, I laughed. I laughed like hell," Warn­er told re­porters yes­ter­day. He took a break from a meet­ing with Mo­hammed Bin Ham­man, pres­i­dent of the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion, who will ri­val Fi­fa pres­i­dent Joseph Sepp Blat­ter in the pres­i­den­cy elec­tion lat­er this year. Bin Ham­man was in Trinidad to share his vi­sion for the game with Con­ca­caf lead­ers. Lord Tries­man told the se­lect com­mit­tee, look­ing in­to Eng­land's failed 2018 foot­ball bid, that Warn­er asked for mon­ey-sug­gest­ed to be £2.5m-to build an ed­u­ca­tion cen­tre in Trinidad with the cash to be chan­nelled through him, and lat­er £500,000 to buy Haiti's World Cup TV rights for the earth­quake-hit na­tion, al­so to go through Warn­er. Tries­man iden­ti­fied Warn­er and three oth­er Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tives-Nico­las Leoz, Ri­car­do Teix­eira and Worawi Maku­di for their "im­prop­er and un­eth­i­cal" be­hav­iour.

Warn­er, who's al­ready de­nied the bribery al­le­ga­tions, was open­ly dis­mis­sive. "I nev­er asked any­body for any­thing. When these guys came here, they of­fered to help. I took them to Long­denville to show them a place in Long­denville where they could put play­ground for the peo­ple of Long­denville. I had a func­tion for them at a Gov­ern­ment school. They promised to come back but they nev­er did. That's all," he said. Warn­er said the tim­ing of the al­le­ga­tions is cu­ri­ous and he ex­pects that there'll be more to come. He ob­served that An­drew Jen­nings, an Eng­lish jour­nal­ist who's made Fi­fa his beat, was ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the com­mit­tee in two weeks time and "he'll come with his bit of garbage to talk about Jack Warn­er, Fi­fa and Blat­ter." "I think that no­body, hon­est­ly, of sub­stance could take those guys se­ri­ous­ly. At the end of the day, I can hold my head tall, I could stand up and say to the world I nev­er asked for this," he said. He ad­vised com­mit­tee mem­bers that rather than find scape­goats, Eng­land should in­stead look dis­pas­sion­ate­ly why its bid failed.

Bin Ham­man, who's vy­ing to be Fi­fa pres­i­dent, de­fend­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion. "With al­le­ga­tions, ev­i­dence is need­ed. The ev­i­dence is very im­por­tant. When you come with al­le­ga­tions, bring the ev­i­dence and I think you'll be more cred­i­ble," he said "What I think is that Fi­fa is not cor­rupt­ed. We are all work­ing with­in the foot­ball are­na. We are vic­tims of the pros­per­i­ty of the game," Ham­man told re­porters. Warn­er found him­self at the cen­tre of British rage last year af­ter Fi­fa award­ed the 2018 World Cup to Rus­sia. The Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent had been court­ed by Eng­land Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron; Prince William, the sec­ond in line to the British throne and foot­ball su­per­star David Beck­ham. Warn­er, one of 22 Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers hold­ing cru­cial World Cup votes, was ac­cused by sec­tions of the me­dia of promis­ing Eng­land the im­por­tant Con­ca­caf votes but fail­ing to de­liv­er.