Jack Warner resigns from FIFA after bribery allegations and escapes sanctions

By Andrew Warshaw

June 20 – Jack Warner sensationally resigned today as FIFA’s longest serving vice-president in the wake of the most explosive bribery scandal in the organisation’s history.

The controversial CONCACAF President, who for weeks has been at the centre of claims that Caribbean colleagues were paid thousands of dollars to vote for Mohamed Bin Hammam in the recent FIFA Ppresidential election, decided to throw in the towel after 30 years’ at the helm of football’s world governing body.

FIFA said it accepted Warner’s decision and it regretted “the turn of events” that led to his decision.

But in what appeared to be face-saving deal to preserve Warner’s integrity, the organisation announced that all procedures against him were being dropped.

Warner, 68, had been temporarily suspended along with Bin Hammam pending a full investigation into accusations that 25 Caribbean federations were offered $40,000 (£24,000) each at a specially arranged meeting in Trinidad on May 10-11.

However many of them took the money, it ended up making no difference as Bin Hammam, head of the Asian Football Confederation, withdrew from the presidential race under suspicion of colluding with Warner, allowing Sepp Blatter, running unopposed, to sweep into a fourth term of office.

The bribery claims were initially brought to FIFA’s attention by Chuck Blazer, CONCACAF’S general secretary who has worked with Warner for over 20 years.

Affidavits sent to the ethics committee testify that Warner told the Caribbean Football Union members that the cash had been provided by Bin Hammam.

The Bahamas FA vice-president Fred Lunn said he had been given the cash in a brown envelope.

He was followed by the President of the Surinam FA, Louis Giskus, who confirmed that he, too, was given $40,000 (£24,000) as a “gift” while Puerto Rico’s FA chief also came clean.

As Warner (pictured above with Bin Hammam) insisted he was not guilty of a “single iota of wrongdoing”, his supporters tried a number of diversionary tactics including unsuccessfully attemping to have Blazer removed from his post.

But with the evidence appearing to stack up against him, FIFA’s most controversial powerbroker, who has survived a number of previous yet far less damaging scandals, has walked before being pushed.

It is understood that results of the investigation into the conduct of both Warner and Bin Hammam, carried out by former FBI director Louis Freeh and due to be announced next month, could have put both men in serious danger of being banned for life.

High-ranking sources have told insideworldfootball that the net was closing in fast against Warner who had promised a “footballing tsunami” as soon as he was charged but who was ultimately engulfed beneath a wave of what appeared to be irrefutable evidence against him.

Caribbean members caught up in the scandal were individually, rather than collectively, interviewed last week and it is this, plus the 17-page “reasoned decision” of the ethics committee – issued to Warner but not made public – that led to his decision to resign. One well-informed insider close to the case described the Ethics Committee’s evidence as so devastating “it completely crushed Warner.”

FIFA decided, for their part, to take a typically soft stance despite Blatter, at the recent FIFA Congress, insisting that weeding out corruption would be the number priority in his final term of office.

“Mr Warner is leaving FIFA by his own volition after nearly 30 years of service, having chosen to focus on his important work on behalf of the people and government of Trinidad & Tobago as a Cabinet Minister and as the Chairman of the United National Congress, the major party in his country’s coalition Government,” FIFA’s official press release stated.

“The FIFA Executive Committee, the FIFA President and the FIFA management thank Mr Warner for his services to Caribbean, CONCACAF and international football over his many years devoted to football at both regional and international level, and wish him well for the future.”

Most controversially of all, the statement concluded: “As a consequence of Warner’s self-determined resignation, all Ethics Committee procedures against him have been closed and the presumption of innocence is maintained.”

What happens next is equalling intriguing. Bin Hammam’s own position must be seriously under threat as must those of the 13 Caribbean nations who supported Warner by saying no such meeting ever took place and no bribes were paid.

Warner’s resignation could not have come at a more embarrassing time for CONCACAF, right in the middle of the Gold Cup, their most prestigious tournament.

He will now be replaced as CONCACAF President but insisted he stepped down through lack of belief in his own people, in particular Blazer.

“I have lost my enthusiasm to continue,” Warner told Bloomberg.

“The general secretary that I had employed, who worked with me for 21 years, with the assistance of elements of FIFA has sought to undermine me in ways that are unimaginable.

“I’ve been hung out to dry continually and I’m not prepared to take that.”

Speaking specifically about the allegations that bribes were paid, Warner added: “It’s not unusual for such things to happen and gifts have been around throughout the history of FIFA.

“What’s happening now for me is hypocrisy.”

Contact the writer of this story at zib.l1732682191labto1732682191ofdlr1732682191owedi1732682191sni@w1732682191ahsra1732682191w.wer1732682191dna1732682191