Af­ter an­nounc­ing that the po­lice force had ini­ti­at­ed no in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the al­le­ga­tions that bribery on an in­ter­na­tion­al scale had tak­en place at Trinidad and To­ba­go's Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs mod­i­fied that un­for­tu­nate po­si­tion by an­nounc­ing that he would be con­tact­ing Fi­fa to source in­for­ma­tion that might form the foun­da­tion of a case. The Com­mis­sion­er might have been play­ing his game with a clear eye on the rules of case build­ing, rea­son­ing that there had been no clear al­le­ga­tion made di­rect­ly to the po­lice; there was no rea­son to act. This in spite of the pub­lic state­ments by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley and Diego Mar­tin MP Colm Im­bert who had called on the po­lice chief to re­view the al­le­ga­tions, wide­ly re­port­ed in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, that more than a mil­lion US dol­lars had been brought in­to the coun­try with­out be­ing de­clared and hand­ed out to mem­bers of the 30-na­tion- strong Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) led, un­til his sus­pen­sion from foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion by Fi­fa, by Jack Warn­er.

Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs might well have been jus­ti­fi­ably cau­tious about putting his toe in roil­ing, un­cer­tain wa­ters. The Fi­fa im­broglio has swerved, of­ten in a mat­ter of hours, from be­ing an in­ter­nal tus­sle to an in­ter­na­tion­al bribery bac­cha­nal to a stew of in­trigue that would have left Machi­avel­li ad­mir­ing­ly en­vi­ous.

Be­fore run­ning on­to that mud­dled field, the Po­lice Chief must have been keen to en­sure that his legal­ly spe­cif­ic cleats were need­ed in play. Gibbs would al­so have been jus­ti­fied in be­ing con­cerned that he was be­ing pushed in­to play by the Op­po­si­tion PNM. There has al­ready been enough idle talk about the role of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er be­ing in­flu­enced by the po­lit­i­cal im­per­a­tives of the Gov­ern­ment that the Com­mis­sion­er might well have been cau­tious about be­ing urged off the bench by the Op­po­si­tion. Still, in an en­vi­ron­ment of pub­lic con­cern and in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion riv­et­ed on ac­cu­sa­tions of blunt­ly crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice could not be seen to be tak­ing a po­si­tion of see­ing and hear­ing no evil un­til it is clear­ly point­ed out to him.

With five mem­bers of the CFU com­ing for­ward to ac­knowl­edge pub­licly that they had been of­fered US$40,000 pack­ages of cash ad­dressed to their na­tions, there was clear­ly in­for­ma­tion be­ing pre­sent­ed to Fi­fa that would be rel­e­vant to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to wrong­do­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go. State­ments from the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tions of the CFU mem­ber states, Suri­name, the Ba­hamas, Bermu­da, the Cay­man Is­lands and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands, which have come for­ward to ac­knowl­edge be­ing of­fered the mon­ey, would sure­ly of­fer the kind of foun­da­tion for in­ves­ti­ga­tion that would sup­port the Com­mis­sion­er's pres­ence in this mer­cu­r­ial game. There's no doubt that dis­trac­tions abound in the brouha­ha that's arisen out of the bribery al­le­ga­tions, the re-elec­tion of Sepp Blat­ter, the ac­cu­sa­tions that con­tin­ue to flur­ry around Jack Warn­er and Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam and the gen­er­al sense of ill-will to­ward Fi­fa. In such an en­vi­ron­ment, Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs must be clear in his role as the des­ig­nat­ed strik­er for law and jus­tice in Trinidad and To­ba­go in his deal­ings with Fi­fa.

De­spite his ear­li­er re­luc­tance to re­spond to the wide­spread in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports of al­leged bribery on these shores, his strat­e­gy with the foot­ball body must be goal-fo­cused. Gath­er rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion and doc­u­men­ta­tion from Fi­fa, so­lic­it state­ments from those mem­bers of the CFU who have ac­knowl­edged re­ceiv­ing the pay­ments and es­tab­lish, from mul­ti­ple in­de­pen­dent sources, a ver­i­fied line­up of par­tic­i­pants in the il­le­gal trans­ac­tion of un­de­clared monies in Trinidad and To­ba­go. None of this is like­ly to be sim­ple, but it is all nec­es­sary if Trinidad and To­ba­go is to re­deem its rep­u­ta­tion from the tar­ring it's re­ceived in the Fi­fa im­broglio and the jus­tice that the Com­mis­sion­er has sworn to up­hold is served with­out fear or favour.