July 10 – Football’s Most Wanted, former FIFA vice president Jack Warner, looks set to continue his evasion of extradition to the US after a Trinidad and Tobago magistrate ruled that he can take his latest challenge of the legality of the extradition order to the Trinidad and Tobago High Court.
Warner’s legal team raised seven question regarding the extradition process in his case. Chief Magistrate Maria Busby Earle-Caddle said the question were legally grounded and had merit.
Referring the questions to the High Court and its decision, she adjourned the extradition proceedings before her to 22 January 2024.
Top of the list of challenges is an alleged agreement made by former attorney general Faris Al-Rawi with the US Justice Department in 2015 that was made before he signed off on the authority for the chief magistrate to proceed with extradition proceedings.
That relates to ‘the speciality principle’ which means that the person extradited can be prosecuted or sentenced in the requesting state (in Warner’s case the US) only in relation to the offences for which extradition was granted, and not for any other crime allegedly committed before the extradition took place.
The challenge questions what the actual agreement with the US covers. Earle-Caddle said the agreement should be in writing, and only then can the AG sign the certificate to move forward with the extradition. However, there appears to be no written documentation of the agreement.
Earle-Caddle even went as far as to question whether there was an agreement.
“There appears to be colossal misrepresentation on behalf of the team by AG and the requesting state (the US),” said Earle-Caddle.
“How does one certify something that is possibly nonexistent? Is this the new norm where this is a flagrant disregard for what is right? Is this the presumption of regularity that ordinary citizens must now accept? A regularity of whatever is expedient? Surely not a rubber-stamping inimical to the protections guaranteed by our legislation and Constitution,” she continued.
While the US in their application for Warner’s extradition referred to a ‘note’ that the terms of the agreement would be observed, it is unclear what that agreement entails and there was no copy of that agreement.
“There must be a written copy of the arrangement in existence,” said Earle-Caddle. “A written arrangement is required along with the authority to proceed.”
On 24 July 2015, the US asked for Warner to be extradited on 29 charges of fraud, corruption and money laundering as part of the FIFFAgate case that the US Justice Department brought against the world governing body.
The request triggered a series of challenges to the extradition process by Warner who has not left Trinidad and Tobago .
On 17 November 2022, the Privy Council eventually ruled that the US’s request for Warner’s extradition was not unfair, which cleared the path for the continuation of proceedings to extradite Warner.
In February Warner asked the magistrate in charge of the extradition process to refer his questions to the High Court.
Warner has already been sentenced, in absence, in the US. Brooklyn U.S. District Judge William Kuntz ordered him to pay $79 million in damages to Concacaf following a 2017 civil action accusing him of embezzling tens of millions of dollars.
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