Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er is still await­ing the full dis­clo­sure of the le­gal fees paid to over a dozen at­tor­neys re­tained to rep­re­sent the State in his still pend­ing ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings and re­lat­ed le­gal chal­lenges.

How­ev­er, from in­for­ma­tion he has been giv­en so far in the mat­ter, from 2015, when the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings were in­sti­tut­ed, to 2022, when Warn­er’s first le­gal chal­lenge to his pro­posed ex­tra­di­tion was re­ject­ed by the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil, six lawyers were paid a to­tal of $6,718,720.

The lawyers were James Lewis, KC, Dou­glas Mendes, SC, Pamela El­der, SC, Michael Quam­i­na, SC, Brent Hallpike and for­mer Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty Unit head Ne­tram Kow­lessar.

Last year, Warn­er, through his lawyer Richard Jag­gasar, filed a law­suit, af­ter he re­quest­ed dis­clo­sure un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) and on­ly re­ceived redact­ed in­for­ma­tion in re­la­tion to six of the 18 lo­cal and for­eign lawyers iden­ti­fied by him.

At the time, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice re­sist­ed the law­suit, as it claimed the dis­clo­sure was cov­ered by le­gal priv­i­lege and that dis­clo­sure would breach the lawyers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pri­va­cy.

The case was sched­uled to go on tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Karen Reid last month but the AG’s Of­fice con­ced­ed the case and promised to dis­close the in­for­ma­tion.

“Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the man­date of the new Gov­ern­ment of T&T as it re­lates to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, has giv­en ap­proval for the dis­clo­sure of the doc­u­ments which form the ba­sis of your claim,” at­tor­ney Vin­cent Jar­dine, of the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, said in cor­re­spon­dence to Jag­gasar.

Based on the as­sur­ance, the law­suit was with­drawn the fol­low­ing day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that while ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion rel­a­tive to the six at­tor­neys pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied was dis­closed, Warn­er is still await­ing the dis­clo­sure in re­la­tion to the oth­ers, as they were paid by the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment and not the AG’s Of­fice.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Jag­gasar de­scribed the orig­i­nal po­si­tion against dis­clo­sure as “an egre­gious abuse of pow­er and a bla­tant at­tempt to sup­press pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

“Trans­paren­cy in the use of pub­lic funds is not op­tion­al, it is a le­gal oblig­a­tion, and it is ap­pre­ci­at­ed that the new gov­ern­ment promised to ap­proach these sorts of mat­ters fair­ly and trans­par­ent­ly,” Jag­gasar said.

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 in 2015, Warn­er was re­leased on $2.5 mil­lion bail

He was one of sev­er­al se­nior ex­ec­u­tives of world foot­ball’s gov­ern­ing body who were in­dict­ed on a se­ries of charges af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion in foot­ball, con­duct­ed by the US Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) and De­part­ment of Jus­tice in 2015.

Sev­er­al of his for­mer col­leagues have plead­ed guilty to the charges and have been sen­tenced. Warn­er’s sons Daryan and Daryll were al­so in­dict­ed and plead­ed guilty to their charges.

The ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against Warn­er were put on hold while he pur­sued a civ­il law­suit claim­ing in­con­sis­ten­cies be­tween this coun­try’s ex­tra­di­tion treaty with the US and the Ex­tra­di­tion (Com­mon­wealth and For­eign Ter­ri­to­ries) Act, which was passed by Par­lia­ment in 1985 be­fore be­ing amend­ed in 2004.

In up­hold­ing the de­ci­sion of the lo­cal courts to re­ject Warn­er’s law­suit, the Privy Coun­cil ruled that there was suf­fi­cient con­for­mi­ty be­tween the treaty and the leg­is­la­tion de­spite mi­nor dif­fer­ences.

As a sec­ondary is­sue in the ap­peal, the Privy Coun­cil had to con­sid­er the ef­fect of a spe­cial arrange­ment cer­ti­fied by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, as he is­sued the au­thor­i­ty to pro­ceed (ATP) for the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings.

The arrange­ment on­ly al­lows the US to pros­e­cute ex­tra­dit­ed per­sons based on the charges it dis­closed and on less­er charges that arose from the ev­i­dence it pro­vid­ed.

When the case was set to go on tri­al on Tues­day, how­ev­er, British at­tor­ney Robert Strang, who was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed to take over as le­gal coun­sel in the case, claimed that Warn­er’s lawyers, led by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, had raised valid con­cerns in re­la­tion to the need for a writ­ten arrange­ment.

Strang apol­o­gised to Warn­er, as he ad­mit­ted his pre­vi­ous civ­il law­suit chal­leng­ing his ex­tra­di­tion was re­ject­ed by the lo­cal courts and the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil based on the ex­is­tence of the writ­ten agree­ment.

“It is plain that the Privy Coun­cil de­cid­ed the case based on a mis­un­der­stand­ing of facts fos­tered by the AG’s Of­fice,” Strang said.

Re­quest­ing a last-minute ad­journ­ment of the tri­al, Strang claimed that Je­re­mie was in the process of in­ves­ti­gat­ing what tran­spired so he could pro­vide the court with nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion re­quired to re­solve the case.

The tri­al was even­tu­al­ly ad­journed as re­quest­ed.