GAIL ALEXAN­DER

The Privy Coun­cil's dis­missal of for­mer FI­FA Vice Pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er's ap­peal has af­firmed as cor­rect the de­ci­sion which was ear­li­er made by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Court of Ap­peal, says At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour SC.

AG Ar­mour is­sued a state­ment fol­low­ing the Privy Coun­cil 's de­ci­sion ear­li­er to­day (No­vem­ber 17).

In the Privy Coun­cil's rul­ing, Warn­er lost his ap­peal against ex­tra­di­tion to the US.  The US De­part­ment of Jus­tice in 2020 is­sued in­dict­ment stat­ing bribes were paid to foot­ball of­fi­cials to se­cure their votes for host­ing rights.  The D.O.J. had al­leged that Warn­er was paid $5 mil­lion through shell com­pa­nies to vote for Rus­sia to host the 2018 World Cup.

The Privy Coun­cil, in its de­ci­sion, stat­ed that the re­quest for ex­tra­di­tion was not un­fair. Among points, the Privy Coun­cil al­so ruled that T&T's At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (Faris Al Rawi at the time) did not act un­fair­ly.

The Privy Coun­cil's rul­ing now clears the way for the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings to be­gin in the T&T courts.

In his state­ment, AG Ar­mour said:

"In a judge­ment is­sued to­day, the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil has dis­missed the ap­peal of Mr. Jack Warn­er against his ex­tra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. In so do­ing the Privy Coun­cil has af­firmed as cor­rect the de­ci­sion which was ear­li­er made by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Court of Ap­peal.

"Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, in para­graph one of its judge­ment the Privy Coun­cil re­minds us that,

'The ap­pel­lant is Jack Austin Warn­er, a politi­cian, busi­ness­man and for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent of Fédéra­tion In­ter­na­tionale de Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (“FI­FA”). He is charged by the pros­e­cut­ing au­thor­i­ties in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (”USA”) with var­i­ous crimes cov­er­ing a pe­ri­od of more than three decades'."

AG Ar­mour not­ed:

"In his ap­peal be­fore the Privy Coun­cil, Mr. Warn­er ar­gued four is­sues, the last most sig­nif­i­cant one be­ing whether there was pro­ce­dur­al or sub­stan­tive un­fair­ness in the pro­ce­dure lead­ing to the is­suance of the Au­thor­i­ty To Pro­ceed to en­able his ex­tra­di­tion, as re­quest­ed by the USA. The Privy Coun­cil has unan­i­mous­ly de­ter­mined that no pro­ce­dur­al or sub­stan­tive un­fair­ness has tak­en place pre­vent­ing Mr. Warn­er’s ex­tra­di­tion to the USA."

He added:

"The judge­ment de­ter­mined fur­ther that in dis­miss­ing Mr. Warn­er’s ap­peal there was no ne­ces­si­ty for it to con­sid­er any of the con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues raised by Mr. Warn­er about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Ex­ec­u­tive, the Leg­is­la­ture and the Courts in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

The AG al­so stat­ed:

"As At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I am able to as­sure the cit­i­zen­ry of this Re­pub­lic that in Trinidad and To­ba­go that the rule of law and due process are alive and well and, the law must now be al­lowed to take its course."

Jack pledges to con­tin­ue the fight

Warn­er is­sued a state­ment soon af­ter the de­ci­sion, stat­ing that he in­tends to keep bat­tling:

"Since re­ceiv­ing the de­ci­sion of the Privy Coun­cil, I have con­ferred with my lawyers and do wish to state that: FI­FA is an in­de­pen­dent as­so­ci­a­tion not af­fil­i­at­ed to any gov­ern­ment or coun­try. At all times it sought, in the in­ter­est of foot­ball, to of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties to the widest cross sec­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to host the World Cup. Par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion was paid to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries who have been de­nied eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty part­ly be­cause for long pe­ri­ods they were un­der colo­nial dom­i­na­tion."

"Against that back­ground FI­FA gave pref­er­ence to South Africa, Rus­sia and Qatar to host World Cup Fi­nals.  Nat­u­ral­ly, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and the Unit­ed King­dom who had pre­vi­ous­ly host­ed the World Cup were not se­lect­ed de­spite sus­tained lob­by­ing. They were there­fore not pleased and there­after be­gan a cam­paign against FI­FA which re­sult­ed in the ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion of sev­er­al Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­bers of FI­FA who had as­sem­bled for a meet­ing in Zurich. I note that sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries in­clud­ing France and Switzer­land, sev­er­al Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, in­clud­ing Brazil, and sev­er­al African and Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries have re­fused to ex­tra­dite their cit­i­zens. Trinidad and To­ba­go is there­fore an out­lier."

Warn­er main­tained:

"I have no bank­ing ac­count nor prop­er­ty in the Unit­ed States. I have not trans­act­ed any busi­ness there. It is un­fath­omable how a New York Dis­trict At­tor­ney could com­mence a pros­e­cu­tion against me based sole­ly on the fact that monies payable to me passed through the Amer­i­can bank­ing sys­tem. Fur­ther­more, it is in­cred­u­lous that al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct aris­ing out of a FI­FA meet­ing held in Trinidad could be pros­e­cut­ed in the Unit­ed States where­as, in Trinidad it­self it does not con­sti­tute crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty."

Warn­er added:

"I con­tin­ue to have con­fi­dence in my team led by Fyard Ho­sein Se­nior Coun­sel, and I have ad­vised them to con­tin­ue to press my case on the three re­main­ing stages of these pro­ceed­ings."

"I have lived in this coun­try for near­ly eighty years, and I am con­fi­dent that I will con­tin­ue to re­ceive the love, af­fec­tion, and re­spect that peo­ple from all walks of life have al­ways ex­tend­ed to me. I am cer­tain I will pre­vail in the end. For the time be­ing, this is all I am pre­pared to say in this mat­ter."