FIFA announce probe into 16 Caribbean football officials

Andrew Warshaw

August 11 – Sixteen Caribbean officials are to be probed by FIFA for their roles in the recent bribery scandal that led to the downfall of former Asian football supremo Mohamed Bin Hammam and the resignation of senior FIFA vice-president Jack Warner.

Just weeks after insideworldfootball’s exclusive report that Caribbean members were at serious risk of being investigated over allegations that they took money at the infamous Trinidad bribes for votes meeting in May, FIFA has confirmed that 16 are under scrutiny.

On July 26 football’s world governing body gave officials from the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) who were said to have attended the meeting 48 hours to come forward with any information about envelopes stuffed with $40,000 being offered on behalf of Bin Hammam, who is appealing the lifetime ban he has already been given.

FIFA’s Ethics Committee said in a statement that it would be contacting all 16 officials who may well also be banned for good if they are found to be withholding information.

“It is important to note that the investigations are still ongoing and that is therefore possible that further proceedings could be opened,” the statement said.

Many of those concerned are understood to be colleagues of Warner, one-time head of CONCACAF, the regional body for north and Central America and the Caribbean and the man who is said to have facilitated bin Hammam’s meeting with the CFU, supposedly designed to give the then President of the Asian Football Confederation a platform to outline his manifesto to take on Sepp Blatter for the FIFA Presidency.

After the bribery case was referred to FIFA, both Warner and Bin Hammam were suspended on May 29, the latter having pulled out of the Presidential race just beforehand.

In its statement FIFA said one of the 16 officials, Colin Klass from Guyana, had been provisionally suspended from taking part in any football-related activity by the chairman of the Ethics Committee, Claudio Sulser, after consideration, intriguingly, of “specific information” to do with the case.

The other 15 officials were named as David Hinds and Mark Bob Forde (Barbados), Franka Pickering and Aubrey Liburd (British Virgin Islands), David Frederick (Cayman Islands), Osiris Guzman and Felix Ledesma (Dominican Republic), Noel Adonis (Guyana), Yves Jean-Bart (Haiti), Anthony Johnson (St. Kitts and Nevis), Patrick Mathurin (St. Lucia), Joseph Delves and Ian Hypolite (St. Vincent and the Grenadines), Richard Groden (Trinidad and Tobago) and Hillaren Frederick (US Virgin Islands).

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