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Monday, July 7, 2025

Warner told to face US court if innocent

by

Walter Alibey
960 days ago
20221120

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Em­bat­tled for­mer vice pres­i­dent of FI­FA Jack Warn­er is be­ing told to prove his in­no­cence ahead of ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings for which he seems to have ex­haust­ed all his op­tions.

The US has charged Warn­er with 29 of­fences of fraud, cor­rup­tion and mon­ey laun­der­ing and is seek­ing to have him ex­tra­dit­ed to face the courts there. Warn­er has since chal­lenged the le­gal­i­ty of the charges be­fore be­ing dealt a se­vere blow on Thurs­day when the Privy Coun­cil in the Unit­ed King­dom, the coun­try’s high­est court of ap­peal, re­ject­ed his at­tor­neys’ ar­gu­ment that the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings were un­law­ful.

Warn­er lat­er is­sued a state­ment to prove his in­no­cence and vowed to keep up his fight against the ex­tra­di­tion. How­ev­er, friends here or­dered Warn­er, al­so a for­mer Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) and CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent, to prove his in­no­cence. For­mer na­tion­al head coach Edgar Vi­dale, a win­ner of this coun­try’s third high­est award, who met Warn­er as a vi­brant and in­spir­ing young ad­min­is­tra­tive tal­ent, said he was not tak­ing sides.

Vi­dale, how­ev­er, be­lieves the Privy Coun­cil has made the right de­ci­sion.

“I was as close to Warn­er as any­body would have got­ten, but I do not agree that he should evade what is hap­pen­ing now. If what he is say­ing is true, that he did not com­mit any crime against the USA, then why don’t you go to the USA and fight it and prove it to the world? Why are you try­ing to evade them? He knows he can’t do it,” Vi­dale said.

“Let us get him to take away the dirty mass that Trinidad has through what is sug­gest­ed as his sin against every­body—FI­FA etc.”

Vi­dale ear­li­er de­liv­ered an al­most glow­ing ac­count of Warn­er as an ad­min­is­tra­tor, say­ing he made tremen­dous sac­ri­fices for him and for the sport in T&T in­clud­ing call­ing then-pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke at mid­night to help the team get tick­ets for a CON­CA­CAF tour­na­ment in the USA many years ago.

He not­ed al­so that Warn­er as­cend­ed to po­si­tions of great pow­er in T&T foot­ball be­cause oth­er peo­ple in po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty, in­clu­sive of for­mer pres­i­dent Oliv­er Camps, did not do what they were sup­posed to do.

“And this man had the en­er­gy to do it for them, he did every­thing, un­til they re­lied on him, so ac­tu­al­ly, they gave him the pow­er that he had.

“And when he re­alised that he had that kind of pow­er, he be­came the man, he was the man in charge of every­thing and he did things that I couldn’t un­der­stand how he did it,” Vi­dale ex­plained.

Mean­while, Brent San­cho, the for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er who rose to world fame when his dread­locks were pulled by lanky Eng­lish strik­er Pe­ter Crouch dur­ing a clash be­tween T&T and Eng­land dur­ing the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many, told Guardian Me­dia that not even ex­tra­di­tion would be the ul­ti­mate judge for Warn­er, but rather when he met his mak­er.

Quizzed on the as­sis­tance pro­vid­ed by Warn­er in in­creas­ing the num­ber of teams in the CON­CA­CAF re­gion now go­ing to the World Cup in­stead of just one, as well as the help ren­dered to sev­er­al play­ers in T&T, San­cho said: “You can look at that, but then you can al­so look at what the resid­ual im­pact was. Be­cause of some of the stuff that was done, it has now left the sit­u­a­tion in tat­ters. If you start itemis­ing things and try to weigh it up, then the con­ver­sa­tion gets very con­vo­lut­ed be­cause, as much as you would say that there were good things that came out, at the same point in time there were some hor­rif­ic things that im­pact­ed a lot of peo­ple, in­clud­ing peo­ple like my­self.

“But what I would say, though, is that what has tran­spired over that pe­ri­od of time has now opened eyes and minds, be­cause with­in the struc­tures and sys­tems that peo­ple put in­to foot­ball, with all the de­fi­cien­cies and the var­i­ous things that are wrong and all the things that are good in foot­ball.

“One thing for sure, that Jack Warn­er, not nec­es­sar­i­ly as an in­di­vid­ual, but what it has shown is the must for the CFU (Caribbean Foot­ball Union) to stick to­geth­er for the bet­ter­ment of foot­ball in the Caribbean, and not just for per­son­al gain or any­thing like that, but for the bet­ter­ment of foot­ball be­cause when we are not, as we have seen over the past cou­ple of years, you can see a de­cline.”

San­cho claimed that his ca­reer was cut short by Warn­er be­cause he asked a ques­tion.

Valenti­no Singh, ex-sports jour­nal­ist and ed­i­tor, shared a per­son­al re­la­tion­ship with Warn­er and of­fered this com­ment:

“There are two sides of Jack Warn­er that are con­fronting T&T—a Robin Hood who shared his spoils with the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and now an em­bat­tled for­mer FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive on 12 charges re­lat­ed to fraud, rack­e­teer­ing, and il­le­gal wire trans­fers, fac­ing pos­si­ble ex­tra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States to an­swer these charges.

“It’s an in­di­ca­tion of what his life was all about,” said the for­mer Guardian Me­dia Ltd sports ed­i­tor who au­thored two books on the for­mer foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tor–Up­wards: The Bi­og­ra­phy of Austin Jack Warn­er and Jack Warn­er: Ze­ro to Hero.

The for­mer high-rank­ing FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive, politi­cian and ex-na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment now news­pa­per pub­lish­er and busi­ness­man, Warn­er, 79, lost the chal­lenge to his ex­tra­di­tion at the Privy Coun­cil last Thurs­day.

There have been mixed re­spons­es to Warn­er’s predica­ment.

“In talk­ing to peo­ple in T&T, look­ing at so­cial me­dia, I am not sur­prised at the kinds of things that I’m see­ing. There are a lot of mixed mes­sages. Trinida­di­ans love to hate,” Singh lament­ed.

Re­fer­ring to Warn­er as a man who has “done things for the down­trod­den,” Singh said, “There was a pe­ri­od in our life where every­one want­ed to be as­so­ci­at­ed with Warn­er, whether it was as him a politi­cian, as a char­i­ta­ble busi­ness­man or foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tor.”

Singh said that some­times the pol­i­tics of this coun­try in­flu­ences how peo­ple think rather than a sit­u­a­tion, but he said that he got to know Warn­er bet­ter by do­ing his bi­og­ra­phy.

“There’s a soft­er side of him where he does things with a good heart. He likes to help peo­ple. How­ev­er, it does not ex­clude what hap­pened with FI­FA.”

FI­FA banned Warn­er from all foot­ball-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties for life in 2015, but Singh said the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion dur­ing his tenure at FI­FA should not be blamed on Warn­er per­son­al­ly but should be at­trib­uted to the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s weak man­age­ment and au­dit­ing struc­tures.

“You have a group of men who got to­geth­er to man­age an or­gan­i­sa­tion in which there were no over­sight and ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms in place to pre­vent them from when the temp­ta­tion came from find­ing them­selves in the sit­u­a­tion they found them­selves. Now, Warn­er has found him­self pos­si­bly ex­tra­dit­ed to Amer­i­ca.

“The cul­ture of FI­FA was a free for all. If you want­ed to do some­thing to ben­e­fit you per­son­al­ly, there was noth­ing that pre­vent­ed you from that.

“Of course, that is no ex­cuse for dis­hon­esty or cor­rup­tion,” Singh said.

Singh de­fend­ed Warn­er’s con­tri­bu­tion as a busi­ness­man, foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tor and politi­cian to T&T, the re­gion and foot­ball over the last few decades.

“Many times these po­si­tions over­lapped. I’m say­ing that you have to take the good with the bad. You can’t say that he has done no good for T&T and the Caribbean.”

Singh con­trast­ed the state of T&T’s foot­ball to­day to the era in which Warn­er played a piv­otal role in the sport’s de­vel­op­ment and con­clud­ed that “foot­ball in T&T is now dead.”

“Right now, T&T does not even have a prop­er foot­ball league. How many of our play­ers are be­ing ex­hib­it­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly? When Warn­er was in charge every Mon­day morn­ing you heard a T&T play­er get­ting an op­por­tu­ni­ty out­side T&T for pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball like Dwight Yorke and Rus­sell Lat­apy.”

Giv­ing ex­am­ples of Warn­er’s con­tri­bu­tion to foot­ball in T&T, he said, “Let’s look at the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League. The places where foot­ball match­es used to be like the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um and Skin­ner Park, all of these places are now run­down. But they’re now play­ing at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um and Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um and sta­di­ums that Warn­er built. There is a resid­ual ef­fect of the things he did which were good.”

Singh al­so ques­tioned the lack of will and pa­tri­o­tism of the coun­try to keep Warn­er from be­ing ex­tra­dit­ed to the US.

“There are oth­er peo­ple in oth­er coun­tries be­ing hunt­ed by the FBI, but they have re­ceived pro­tec­tion from their re­spec­tive coun­tries. In T&T, we have not stood be­hind Warn­er. If he com­mit­ted all the crimes that they say he com­mit­ted, why is he not tried as a cit­i­zen here in T&T? Why is Amer­i­ca pick­ing him up and car­ry­ing him for some­thing he did as a T&T na­tion­al? The courts in T&T should be the ones run­ning be­hind him and hunt­ing him down. All oth­er coun­tries pro­tect their cit­i­zens,” he said.

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