By Paul Nicholson
August 14 – When Jeff Webb was president of Concacaf he was always a pretty cool cat – approachable, friendly, always reasonable, nice guy to be around and pretty generous with it. Since his US Justice Department indictment in 2015 on corruption chrages he has needed all of a cat’s nine lives to stave off sentencing.
A report in French newspaper Le Monde says that his lawyer applied for a tenth postponement of his sentencing to Brooklyn Federal Court judge Pamela Chen dated August 7 in which the lawyer requests a postponement of “about six months” of the sentencing date. The letter says: “The government has not objected to the proposed adjournment.”
The new date for sentencing has now been set for 10 March 2020.
The most obvious reasoning behind a further delay in sentencing would be that Webb (pictured second right) has more evidence to give to the US Justice Department, in particular surrounding the Concacaf president and FIFA vice president he succeeded, Jack Warner.
Warner was indicted at the same time as Webb but not arrested. He has fought extradition from Trinidad and Tobago but is in the final appeal of a decision to hand him over to the US that is poised to go before the Privy Council in the UK. Most legal opinion has been that Warner will not survive this appeal and US law enforcement will at last get their man.
For his part Warner has previously promised that he will lift the lid off a whole new can of worms if he is formally indicted. Presumably Webb will be in tow to corroborate and add to Warner’s promised revelations, as well as testify against Warner.
It is a story that still looks set to run and run.
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