Trinidad calls for further investigations into 2011 bribe scandal

By Andrew Warshaw

June 1 – Trinidad and Tobago’s chief prosecutor says further investigations may be needed into how around $1 million (£652,000/€811,000) was brought into the country and paid to Caribbean football officials in last year’s cash-for-votes bribery scandal.

Ever since the infamous meeting in a Trinidad hotel in May 2011, questions have been raised about how the money entered the country before being handed over in brown envelopes in one of the most disgraceful episodes in FIFA’s history.

The scandal brought FIFA to its knees and led to Mohamed Bin Hammam, at the time Asian football’s most powerful official, being banned for life pending an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and Trinidadian FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, still an influential political figure in his homeland, resigning from all footballing activities.

Last week in Budapest, the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) attempted at its Annual Congress to try to move forward but a year after the scandal, Roger Gaspard (pictured above), Trinidad and Tobago’s director of public prosecution (DPP), has disclosed the probe is not over yet.

Gaspard told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that based on the “threadbare information and material” given to him at the time of the Port of Spain meeting, he could not determine that any law was broken.

But quoted by CMC, he reportedly told the investigating police officer: “I am also of the view that further investigations may be warranted pursuant to the Customs Act [that deals with the non declaration of a significant money into the country].”

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