Gail Alexan­der

“Let the US do what they want.”

That was the re­sponse of for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er to a BBC re­port yes­ter­day which stat­ed that a new in­dict­ment was re­vealed in the US Dis­trict Court on Mon­day al­leg­ing for­mer FI­FA ex­ec­u­tives, in­clud­ing Warn­er, took bribes in re­turn for vot­ing for Rus­sia and Qatar to host the World Cup. That’s the claim by US pros­e­cu­tors in the in­dict­ment.

Warn­er con­firmed the is­sue arose in the US Mon­day.

“That’s stale news,” he added, dis­miss­ing the US ac­tion.

The de­vel­op­ment is the lat­est ac­tion on FI­FA is­sues af­ter Warn­er was in­dict­ed in May 2015 by the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice and an ar­rest war­rant is­sued for him and oth­er FI­FA of­fi­cials. Warn­er and the oth­ers were ac­cused of wire fraud, rack­e­teer­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing. Warn­er de­nied al­le­ga­tions and has fought ex­tra­di­tion to the US since then.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, in Ju­ly 2019 a US court en­tered a de­fault judge­ment against Warn­er in a civ­il law­suit filed by CON­CA­CAF when Warn­er failed to ap­pear, or­der­ing him to re­pay US$79 mil­lion al­leged­ly fraud­u­lent­ly ob­tained from CON­CA­CAF.

On the lat­est is­sue, the BBC de­scribed Mon­day’s lat­est US in­dict­ment as a “high­ly sig­nif­i­cant twist” in the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions’ long-run­ning in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of foot­ball cor­rup­tion. The BBC stat­ed that doc­u­ments claim sev­er­al for­mer FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers “were of­fered or re­ceived bribes in con­nec­tion with their votes.”

The US Jus­tice De­part­ment made al­le­ga­tions against Nico­las Leoz, for­mer pres­i­dent of South Amer­i­can gov­ern­ing body CON­MEBOL and ex-Brazil fed­er­a­tion supre­mo Ri­car­do Teix­eira. Both are ac­cused of tak­ing mon­ey “in ex­change for their votes in favour of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup.”

The BBC claimed Trinida­di­an Warn­er was al­so al­leged­ly paid £4m through a host of off­shore shell com­pa­nies to back Rus­sia’s 2018 bid. Rus­sia beat Eng­land to win the right to host the 2018 World Cup. BBC not­ed that Warn­er was pres­i­dent of CON­CA­CAF and that Teix­eira and Warn­er, who’s al­so been banned for life by FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF, have avoid­ed ex­tra­di­tion to the US.

For­mer ex­ec­u­tives at US tele­vi­sion’s 21st Cen­tu­ry Fox have al­so been charged in the in­dict­ment with mak­ing pay­ments to South Amer­i­can foot­ball of­fi­cials to se­cure broad­cast rights.

The BBC quot­ed FBI as­sis­tant di­rec­tor-in-charge William Sweeney say­ing they were “in­ves­ti­gat­ing the il­lic­it hand­shakes and back­room deals al­leged­ly hid­den in the in­fra­struc­ture” of foot­ball events, venues and mar­ket­ing con­tracts.

Sweeney was quot­ed say­ing, “The first pub­lic charges date back to 2015. This should il­lus­trate to every­one still hop­ing to score mil­lions cor­rupt­ly, we’re go­ing to find you.”

The BBC not­ed this was the first time US pros­e­cu­tors “for­mal­ly laid out in such de­tail how the al­leged cor­rup­tion was con­duct­ed. How­ev­er, the in­dict­ment does not spec­i­fy who was be­hind the al­leged bribery. FI­FA said it would “con­tin­ue to pro­vide full co­op­er­a­tion.”

Mean­while, on an­oth­er as­pect of Warn­er’s life - pol­i­tics- the for­mer In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader said yes­ter­day that he’ll be do­ing some­thing in the pol­i­tics ahead.

“Every­thing is tim­ing, pol­i­tics is about tim­ing,” he replied when asked when and what.

Warn­er’s ILP suc­ces­sor Rekha Ramjit was among small par­ty lead­ers re­cent­ly in­volved in talks with for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Bas­deo Pan­day on a po­lit­i­cal al­ter­na­tive for T&T’s up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions. Warn­er at­tend­ed the launch of talks in Feb­ru­ary but sev­er­al oth­er par­ty lead­ers - COP, MND and oth­ers - de­cid­ed against Pan­day’s sug­ges­tion for par­ties to dis­solve tem­porar­i­ly and con­test un­der one ban­ner.

Pan­day, how­ev­er, con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions with the ILP and oth­ers. De­lib­er­a­tions are cur­rent­ly on hold due to the COVID-19 is­sue.