August 1 – He has become the most notorious ‘villain’ still at large in world football – if the US indictments of 2015 are to be taken a face value – Jack Warner has returned to the Trinidad and Tobago courts. This time he is not fighting his extradition to the US – still on-going – but battling the local FA for $2.3 million of loans he claims he provided but hasn’t been repaid.
Warner says that he provided the money as loans to the Trinidad and Tobago FA (TTFA) over a 15-year period, including to help fund the successful 2006 World Cup qualifying campaign.
The TTFA wrote the loans off as a debt in 2015 – following a change in administration – saying that “the debt was statute-barred and it had no obligation to pay,” according to the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian.
The debt was reportedly acknowledged in TTFA financial statements between 2007 and 2012 and TTFA president Tim Kee wrote to Warner in 2012 saying that the money would be repaid once the TTFA’s financial position improved.
The TTFA is currently understood to still labouring under up to $40 million of debt built up during Kee’s regime (2012 to 2015) and that of preceding TTFA president Ollie Camps (1992 to 2012). Both were close associates and supporters of Warner.
Warner, who has waited until 2019 to claim the money, is still undergoing extradition proceedings to the UK and his liberty in Trinidad now hanging by the thread of a Privy Council ruling on a technicality.
In the 2015 US department of justice indictments Warner is accused of filtering of millions of dollars from the CFU, including money that would ordinarily have been paid to the TTFA.
Last month, US District Court Judge William Kuntz entered a $20 milliondefault judgement against Warner in an embezzlement case brought against him by Concacaf.
Concacaf has also brought a $37.8 million lawsuit against Warner in Trinidad that includes his wife, accountant and two companies over the development of the Dr Joao Havelange Centre of Excellence in Macoya. The suit alleges that Warner fraudulently secured FIFA and Concacaf funding to develop the property. That case is on-going.
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