By Andrew Warshaw
July 20 – Jack Warner, the former FIFA vice-president who resigned over last year’s cash-for-votes affair, says he feels “relieved and comforted” after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) annulled the lifetime ban on his alleged partner in crime, Mohamed Bin Hammam.
But Warner (pictured above), currently Security Minister in his native Trinidad and Tobago where the infamous May 2011, meeting took place, said he was not prepared to go through the same “charade” in order to try and clear his name.
Warner was the man who was said to have facilitated the meeting at which a raft of Caribbean officials were offered $40,000 (£25,000/€33,000) bundles of cash but insists the CAS ruling in favour of Bin Hammam (pictured below, left) was good news for him too.
He too, he believes, would have been cleared by the CAS had he been charged by FIFA although there is no direct evidence to back up such claims.
“I waited a little more than a year for this day and now I feel, not only in a sense relieved, but I feel comforted,” Warner said.
“But I was not prepared to go through this charade.”
Warner evoked memories of his famous “footballing tsunami” remark by warning there was more to come.
“Very early, I said to you all wait and even today I tell you again, more is coming, so wait, guys, wait,” he said.
He claimed FIFA President Sepp Blatter (pictured above, left) controlled “every rung” of the internal FIFA ladder and that he therefore wanted no more to do with the organisation he served for a quarter of a century.
Even the former members of the Ethics Committee, which has since been revamped, was under Blatter’s thumb, he charged.
“When you check that the head of FIFA Ethics Committee is Blatter’s good friend and all of them who he hand-picked imposed a ban for life, three qualified judges said it was not so,” Warner slammed.
“I don’t even want to go close to FIFA anymore.
“They send magazines, I don’t even read them.
“I want nothing to do with them.
“The crime committed in Blatter’s eyes was that an opponent (of Bin Hammam) was going against him to change the structure of FIFA.
“That is why I opposed Blatter in the election.
“I was his right-hand man until I said enough was enough.”
However, Warner did not explain why, if he indeed had switched camps, he allegedly told Caribbean delegates that monies offered to them had come from Bin Hammam.
“I want nothing from football and I do not expect to go back to football in the long term or the short term,” he insisted.
Contact the writer of this story at zib.l1734783463labto1734783463ofdlr1734783463owedi1734783463sni@w1734783463ahsra1734783463w.wer1734783463dna1734783463