Geisha Kow­lessar

Mere hours away from fil­ing his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers as a UNC can­di­date, seek­ing to be re-elect­ed as the Ch­agua­nas West MP, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er yes­ter­day pro­duced a 33-page doc­u­ment which he said cleared him of the wrong­do­ing al­leged in a Con­ca­caf re­port.Warn­er, at a news con­fer­ence at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, said he hired re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal Zain­ool Ho­sein, An­drew Mitchell, QC, and Bertram Com­mis­siong, QC, to ex­am­ine the re­port.

Last month, the Con­ca­caf In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee pub­lished a re­port in which it claimed that for­mer FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers– Warn­er and Charles "Chuck" Blaz­er–for­mer­ly the pres­i­dent and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of Con­ca­caf, re­spec­tive­ly–used their po­si­tions to pro­mote their own self-in­ter­ests ahead of those of Con­ca­caf.

The com­mit­tee al­so found Warn­er had com­mit­ted fraud against Con­ca­caf and FI­FA, specif­i­cal­ly in re­gard to the Dr Jo�o Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, and mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed funds giv­en by the Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion of Aus­tralia to­wards de­vel­op­ment of a sta­di­um in T&T.Warn­er, who said he print­ed some 25,000 copies of the re­port to be dis­trib­uted to his con­stituents to­day, said he want­ed no pity but rather want­ed to en­sure that the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty knew what tran­spired.

Warn­er is ex­pect­ed to be at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, at 1.30 pm to­mor­row to file his pa­pers.

The Find­ings:

Ho­sein, in his find­ings, said the in­ves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee fell in­to er­ror by wrong­ly pur­port­ing to act as a court of law prop­er­ly ap­point­ed and con­sti­tut­ed."The com­mit­tee, hav­ing recog­nised that it was not a prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed court of law with le­gal ex­is­tence, mis­di­rect­ed it­self in pur­port­ing to act as such," Ho­sein added.

Mitchell said while the com­mit­tee con­sist­ed of dis­tin­guished ju­rists and an in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­enced in com­pli­ance and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, it failed in some fun­da­men­tal ways to re­spect the in­di­vid­ual rights of those un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"While I note that the com­mit­tee wrote, in­ter alia, Mr Warn­er and Mr Blaz­er seek­ing doc­u­ments, they failed in their du­ty of fair-deal­ing to write be­fore pub­li­ca­tion of the re­port to set out that they were mind­ed to make pub­lic find­ings of a most se­ri­ous na­ture and give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond," Mitchell added.

He said it was "sim­ply un­ac­cept­able" to con­demn some­one with­out of­fer­ing them the chance to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions. "It is no more than a pub­li­ca­tion of a se­ries of al­le­ga­tions that might lead to ac­tion be­ing tak­en but the re­port has been dressed up as the fi­nal judg­ment of cul­pa­bil­i­ty. Frankly this is an un­fair de­nial of rights which each com­mit­tee mem­ber should have been live to," Mitchell added.

He said the in­tegri­ty com­mis­sion ap­peared to have been pre­pared to draw in­fer­ences and to make find­ings with­out in­ves­ti­gat­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence and the foot­ball au­thor­i­ties over the years."Had they done so they would have found, it ap­pears, a pre­pon­der­ance of ma­te­r­i­al which would have shown that if the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence did be­long to Con­ca­caf as they sug­gest, rent was be­ing paid by them­selves to them­selves, which has the ap­pear­ance of lack­ing log­ic."

In his find­ings Com­mis­siong said it ap­peared Warn­er was sin­gled out as a scape­goat and the rea­sons could best be de­scribed be­hind FI­FA's "dark veil of dis­hon­esty and sleaze."He said it ap­peared Warn­er was be­ing un­fair­ly tar­get­ed be­cause of his al­le­giance to a ri­val can­di­date to the in­cum­bent in that elec­tion."The in­ves­ti­ga­tion ap­pears to be shot through with mal­ice and reeks of vin­dic­tive pol­i­tick­ing," he added.