By Mark Baber
December 22 – FIFA presidential candidate Tokyo Sexwale appeared before the US Grand Jury last week in relation to the Jack Warner bribery allegations and the infamous $10 million from South Africa. He then jumped straight on a plane to Africa where he continued his lobbying in the FIFA election at the COSAFA (Council of Southern African Football Associations) annual general meeting.
A spokesman for Sexwale said: “He did appear before a grand jury. The FBI said he needed to appear and he went as a potential witness.”
Sexwale was a member of the South African bid committee that successfully campaigned for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup, beating rival bids from Morocco and Egypt. It is therefore unsurprising that he would be called before the Grand Jury which is considering what the supervening indictment describes as the “2010 FIFA World Cup Vote Scheme” whereby money was allegedly paid to Warner in order to secure votes for South Africa’s bid.
According to the indictment Jack Warner at one point directed his relative Daryan Warner “to fly to Paris, France and accept a briefcase containing bundles of U.S. currency in $10,000 stacks in a hotel room from Co-Conspirator #13, a high-ranking South African bid committee official. Hours after arriving in Paris, Daryan Warner boarded a return flight and carried the briefcase back to Trinidad and Tobago, where Daryan Warner provided it to Warner.”
Furthermore, according to the indictment: “Subsequently, Charles Blazer learned from the defendant Jack Warner that high-ranking officials of FIFA, including Co-Conspirator #14, the South African bid committee, including Co-Conspirator #15, and the South African government were prepared to arrange for the government of South Africa to pay $10 million to CFU to “support the African diaspora.”
“Blazer understood the offer to be in exchange for the agreement of Warner, Blazer, and Co-Conspirator #16 to all vote for South Africa, rather than Morocco, to host the 2010 World Cup. At the time, Co-Conspirator #16, like Warner and Blazer, was a FIFA executive committee member. Warner indicated that he had accepted the offer and told Blazer that he would give a $1 million portion of the $10 million payment to Blazer.”
The Grand Jury will determine whether and which criminal charges should be brought. Sexwale is hugely popular in the United States for his important role in the anti-apartheid struggle, but the news that he has been called as a witness, even if he is not directly implicated himself, is hardly likely to be a welcome development regarding his bid for the FIFA presidency.
At the COSAFA meeting Sexwale said that FIFA had never had an African president.
“The score is 111 to zero against Africa. For 111 years FIFA has not had an African..I am not here to keep quiet like a slave and pretend that these things are not happening.” Sexwale said that Europe would have pulled out of FIFA by now if this situation was the other way round.
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