DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er seems set to be freed of the threat of ex­tra­di­tion al­most ex­act­ly a decade af­ter the Unit­ed States first re­quest­ed that he face tri­al for al­leged cor­rup­tion com­mit­ted dur­ing his ca­reer at world foot­ball’s gov­ern­ing body. 

High Court Judge Karen Reid was called up­on to quash Warn­er’s long-pend­ing ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings as his most re­cent civ­il law­suit chal­leng­ing the han­dling of the US’s re­quest came up for hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

The call made by Warn­er’s lawyers, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein, SC, based on ma­jor con­ces­sions made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, dur­ing a pre­vi­ous hear­ing last month, was sup­port­ed by British at­tor­ney Robert Strang, who rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al at the hear­ing. 

“Let Jack go free,” Ho­sein said. 

De­spite the joint po­si­tion, Jus­tice Reid de­clined to make an im­me­di­ate de­ci­sion as she re­quest­ed fur­ther sub­mis­sions on the ef­fect of rul­ings by the Court of Ap­peal and the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil on a pre­vi­ous law­suit un­suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sued by Warn­er. 

She set dead­lines for the fil­ing of the sub­mis­sions and re­served Sep­tem­ber 23 to de­liv­er her de­ci­sion. 

In his sub­mis­sions, Ho­sein sug­gest­ed that Jus­tice Reid was not lim­it­ed by the out­come of the pre­vi­ous case, as such was de­cid­ed based on mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions by pre­vi­ous lawyers for the AG’s Of­fice, which were ad­mit­ted by Je­re­mie dur­ing a pre­vi­ous hear­ing last month. 

“Not on­ly did they act in a man­ner lack­ing can­dour, but they act­ed fraud­u­lent­ly and told lies to the court. They lied to the High Court, the Court of Ap­peal, and the Privy Coun­cil and were sup­port­ed by two AGs. That is ab­solute­ly wrong,” Ho­sein said. 

He claimed that the con­duct breached the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act and the Code of Ethics for at­tor­neys.

“This coun­try and its gov­ern­ment are con­duct­ed by laws. Peo­ple can’t mis­lead the court,” he added, as he not­ed that his client would be seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion, in­clud­ing the re­im­burse­ment of his le­gal costs, based on what tran­spired in the case. 

While Strang agreed that the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings should be im­me­di­ate­ly quashed, he said that his client could not ad­mit that his pre­de­ces­sors, Faris Al-Rawi and Regi­nald Ar­mour, and the le­gal team that rep­re­sent­ed the AG’s Of­fice dur­ing their tenure, com­mit­ted fraud in the case. 

He not­ed that they were no longer in­volved in the case, were yet to of­fi­cial­ly pro­vide re­spons­es on what tran­spired in the case pre­vi­ous­ly, and should be giv­en a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fend them­selves. 

“To be fair to those who are not par­ties to pro­ceed­ings and who are yet to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions, the AG can­not con­cede that the cer­tifi­cate was fraud­u­lent­ly claimed and they car­ried on know­ing that fal­si­ties were be­ing pre­sent­ed to the court,” Strang said. 

Af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions, Jus­tice Reid sug­gest­ed that she con­sid­er the con­duct of the AG’s Of­fice and its rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Warn­er’s com­pen­sa­tion case af­ter a full tri­al on Oc­to­ber 3.  

Last month, Strang con­ced­ed that while the AG’s Of­fice pre­vi­ous­ly claimed that it had a case spe­cif­ic cer­tifi­cate of spe­cial­i­ty in­di­cat­ing that Warn­er would on­ly be pros­e­cut­ed for crimes spec­i­fied in the ini­tial US re­quest, no such doc­u­ment was found by Je­re­mie through an in­ter­nal probe. 

He ad­mit­ted that the pre­vi­ous le­gal team re­lied on a gen­er­alised cer­tifi­cate that had been utilised for dozens of pre­vi­ous ex­tra­di­tions over the past two decades, in­clud­ing dur­ing Je­re­mie’s first stint as AG. 

At the time, Strang apol­o­gised to Warn­er as he ad­mit­ted that his pre­vi­ous civ­il law­suit was re­ject­ed based on the ex­is­tence of the cer­tifi­cate.

Warn­er, 81, is ac­cused by US au­thor­i­ties of 29 charges re­lat­ed to fraud, rack­e­teer­ing, and en­gag­ing in il­le­gal wire trans­fers.

The of­fences are al­leged to have tak­en place in the Unit­ed States, T&T, and oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions be­tween 1990 and June 2011, when Warn­er quit Fi­fa af­ter be­ing sus­pend­ed.

Af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed on a pro­vi­sion­al war­rant pur­suant to the ex­tra­di­tion re­quest, Warn­er was re­leased on $2.5 mil­lion bail.