By Andrew Warshaw
April 2 – Former FIFA powerbroker Jack Warner has spoken out for the first time following reports of an FBI probe into alleged corruption linked to his family.
Warner, Trinidad and Tobago’s national security minister and a former FIFA vice-president who resigned from football in the wake of the infamous 2011 cash-for-votes scandal, reiterated his denials of any wrongdoing and claimed he was being targeted by political opponents.
Last week Reuters quoted U.S. law enforcement sources as saying Daryan Warner, son of the former CONCACAF boss, had become a “cooperating witness” in the FBI investigation but that no charges had been brought against anyone.
While declining to comment on any aspect of the investigation, Warner, speaking to local media over the weekend, said: “I do not think you know of any other politician who for the last three years has been maligned and who has been crucified as I have been.”
“The one objective in mind (is) to get rid of Jack Warner because there are those who believe that if you get rid of Jack Warner then you get rid of a major chunk or chink in the government’s armour.”
Despite Warner’s comments that opponents were out to get him, Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who has repeatedly stood by him since he quit his FIFA and CONCACAF positions, admitted she is seeking clarification over the apparent FBI probe. Persad-Bissessar said she has instructed Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Dookeran and Attorney General Anand Ramlogan to use diplomatic channels to obtain details.
“It would be premature if not prejudicial for me to act without any official clarification or confirmation from the U.S. authorities on this controversial and sensitive matter,” she said.
The exact scope of the FBI investigation is not clear but it is has been widely reported that the organisation has been examining more than $500,000 in payments made by the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) to an offshore company headed by former CONCACAF general secretary Chuck Blazer during the period when Warner headed the confederation which covers north and central America and the Caribbean. The precise reasons for many of those payments is unclear. In 2011, Blazer said that the payments were meant to be repayments to him by Warner of “a significant amount of money” which Blazer said he loaned to Warner in 2004. Warner told local media in Trinidad that the payments were above board.
FIFA said last week it was “unaware” of any FBI investigation and Warner said he will not be derailed from his governmental responsibilities. “I will continue and I will do what I have to do. I have nothing to be afraid of and I sleep very soundly at night,” he was quoted as saying in Trinidad.
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