KINGSTON- Ja­maican Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion chief Cap­tain Ho­race Bur­rell on Tues­day de­nied claims he re­ceived mon­ey in last year's cash-for-votes scan­dal, in a fi­nal at­tempt to close a per­son­al chap­ter on the con­tro­ver­sy that rocked Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. Bur­rell was one of sev­er­al Caribbean of­fi­cials slapped with bans by foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA, for vi­o­la­tions of its Code of Ethics, fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the af­fair. "I want to put this to bed, none of us ben­e­fit­ed from the U$40,000, our coun­try nev­er ben­e­fit­ed and it is now time to move on and I hope you all un­der­stand that it was un­for­tu­nate that we did not ful­ly co­op­er­ate dur­ing the ini­tial stages of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion," the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er quot­ed Bur­rell as say­ing.

"But I don't want to get in­to any fur­ther de­tails be­cause you have to un­der­stand that there are oth­er mat­ters, and some peo­ple have made ap­peals and so on. "I did not ben­e­fit from any mon­e­tary gain from that meet­ing in Trinidad, nei­ther did Bruce Gaynor (JFF vice-pres­i­dent), nei­ther did Ho­race Reid (gen­er­al sec­re­tary), or Ja­maica so none of us ben­e­fit­ed from any mon­e­tary gains." It was al­leged that Qatar's Mo­hammed bin Ham­mam, who was a FI­FA pres­i­den­tial can­di­date last June, part­nered with for­mer Caribbean foot­ball strong­man Jack Warn­er to of­fer Caribbean Foot­ball Union mem­bers $40,000 in ex­change for their votes at a meet­ing in Trinidad.

Both Warn­er and bin Ham­mam were sus­pend­ed by FI­FA pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion charges but Warn­er sud­den­ly re­signed as a FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent and al­so quit his roles with CFU and CON­CA­CAF, the gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball in North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. FI­FA prompt­ly closed any ac­tion against the Trinida­di­an but bin Ham­mam chal­lenged the charges and was found guilty and banned for life. Bur­rell, a lead­ing CFU mem­ber and a long-time al­ly of Warn­er, was hand­ed a six-month ban last Oc­to­ber while three more CFU of­fi­cials were banned, three rep­ri­mand­ed and five warned by FI­FA's ethics com­mit­tee.With three months of the ban sus­pend­ed, Bur­rell's ex­clu­sion end­ed ear­li­er on Jan­u­ary 15 and he will now re­turn to ac­tive foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion. (CMC)