By Andrew Warshaw
August 19 – Scandal-tarnished former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has claimed he has no case to answer after being linked in his homeland with a £250,000 ($392,000/€318,000) cheque he allegedly received from Qatar while involved with world football’s governing body.
Warner (pictured top), 69, resigned from all football activities rather than face a probe into his role in last year’s cash-for-votes scandal in Trinidad and Tobago that found Asian football supremo Mohamed Bin Hammam (pictured below) guilty of bribery.
The 63-year-old Qatari had his FIFA lifetime ban overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last month but is now being investigated over separate claims of financial mismanagement from the time he ran Asian football.
According to an audit into Bin Hammam’s financial dealings, he made an unexplained payment of £250,000 ($392,000/€318,000) to Warner while he was President of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
That same sum is now being debated in Parliament in Trinidad and Tobago, where Warner is Minister of National Security, and came up again during a debate on the Financial Intelligence Unit of Trinidad and Tobago and the question of money laundering.
Fellow parliamentarian Colm Imbert warned the Financial Action Task Force would be “looking at wire transfers from countries like Qatar that might have come into a bank account in Trinidad and Tobago and into the bank account of a politically exposed person”.
But Warner countered that by insisting that any transactions from Qatar or anywhere involving any member of the Government was “open, free and above board”.
“I sleep very soundly at night,” Warner said.
Warner also told fellow MPs that he had no intention of becoming Trinidad and Tobago’s next Prime Minister.
Opposition leader Dr Keith Rowley recently alleged at a political rally that a plan was being hatched for Warner to become Prime Minister, and for current imcumbent Kamla Persad-Bissessar to be made President.
However, Warner said: “I never had an aspiration to become Prime Minister of this country – I don’t have now and I will not have tomorrow or ever.”
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