Nigel Si­mon

Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day he was un­aware of any wrong­do­ing on his part amidst al­le­ga­tions, in­clud­ing bribery, which were made against him by Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber and long­time friend Chuck Blaz­er. That fol­lows rev­e­la­tions Fi­fa had be­gun an ethics in­quiry in­to Warn­er and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam. The two have been sum­moned to a hear­ing on Sun­day at Fi­fa head­quar­ters, Zurich, Switzer­land. Al­so called to the meet­ing are Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) of­fi­cials, Deb­bie Minguell and Ja­son Sylvester, both of T&T.

Blaz­er claims Fi­fa's code of ethics was vi­o­lat­ed at a meet­ing, "ap­par­ent­ly or­gan­ised" by Bin Ham­mam and Warn­er. The meet­ing was held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, on May 10 and 11 and was in re­la­tion to the Fi­fa's pres­i­den­tial elec­tion which takes place next Wednes­day in Zurich. Bin Ham­mam, pres­i­dent of the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion, is run­ning against cur­rent pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter to be Fi­fa's new pres­i­dent. Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from Fi­fa, Blaz­er, the Con­ca­caf gen­er­al sec­re­tary, re­port­ed on Mon­day to Fi­fa sec­re­tary gen­er­al Jerome Val­cke pos­si­ble vi­o­la­tions of the Fi­fa code of ethics, al­leged­ly com­mit­ted by the two of­fi­cials.

The state­ment con­tin­ued: "In par­tic­u­lar, the re­port re­ferred to a spe­cial meet­ing of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU), ap­par­ent­ly or­gan­ised joint­ly by Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent Jack Austin Warn­er and FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber, Bin Ham­mam, which took place on May 10 and 11, 2011. "This meet­ing was linked to the up­com­ing Fi­fa pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. "In view of the facts al­leged in this re­port, which in­clude bribery al­le­ga­tions, Fi­fa sec­re­tary gen­er­al Jerome Val­cke, in com­pli­ance with Ar­ti­cle 16 of the Fi­fa code of ethics, yes­ter­day re­quest­ed its ethics com­mit­tee to open ethics pro­ceed­ings." The 68-year-old Warn­er, who is al­so the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship T&T Gov­ern­ment, con­firmed he was in­vit­ed to Sun­day's hear­ing.

Warn­er said he had tak­en note of the Fi­fa ini­tia­tive and con­firmed he would be at­tend­ing. He said he was un­aware of the par­tic­u­lars of what was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed and pre­ferred to ab­stain from com­ment­ing un­til such time as he was aware of what was sub­mit­ted to Fi­fa. He added: "What I can say at this time is that I am not aware of any wrong­do­ing on my part and I shall lis­ten to al­le­ga­tions made and re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly." Warn­er said the tim­ing of the al­le­ga­tions and the hear­ing sched­uled days be­fore the Fi­fa pres­i­den­tial elec­tion were in­ter­est­ing. "As this is now a for­mal pro­ce­dure, I shall not be of­fer­ing any fur­ther com­ment pri­or to the hear­ing on Sun­day." he ad­deed.

Warn­er was at the cen­tre of an­oth­er con­tro­ver­sy ear­li­er this month af­ter be­ing ac­cused of bribery by for­mer Eng­lish FA chair­man Lord Tries­man dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary en­quiry in­to Eng­land's failed 2018 World Cup bid. Bin Ham­mam and Warn­er are both sched­uled to be in Zurich to­day for a meet­ing of Fi­fa's fi­nance com­mit­tee, and to at­tend Fi­fa's ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee meet­ing,to be chaired by Blat­ter, on Mon­day. They face sus­pen­sions from all foot­ball du­ties if bribery al­le­ga­tions are proven. Both were re-elect­ed un­op­posed this year to lead their con­ti­nen­tal bod­ies for four more years.