By Andrew Warshaw
April 26 – Embattled former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, renowned for his often outrageous rants during a scandal-tarnished career in football, launched one final no-holds-barred attack on his critics Thursday as he reluctantly stepped down as a politician in his native Trinidad and Tobago.
Warner, who resigned as Minister of National Security last weekend following explosive new accusations of corruption during his time as football’s most controversial powerbroker, used a stage-managed constituency meeting – dubbed “Straight Talk” – to announce he was quitting as a member of parliament but also to deliver a tell-all denunciation of his detractors.
Reading from a 33-page dossier laden with a spate of emotive language that detailed his involvement both in FIFA and government, Warner said his resignation would take effect from midnight Friday local time but that he would be seeking re-election.
Denouncing those who had “said every dirty thing under the sun” about him, Warner told supporters everything they wanted to hear by portraying himself as a corrupt-free upstanding individual who had been unfairly pursued by journalists.
Using Biblical references and all manner of emotional rhetoric to get his message across he described the world of international sports politics as “an arena of extremely high stakes” with those involved often “lured by the trappings of office and the craving for power.”
“It is against this background that I have found myself a keenly pursued target,” said Warner who, not for the first time, used words like “hounded,” “persecuted” and “character assassination”.
Warner, who stepped down from all footballing positions in 2011 in the wake of the infamous cash-for-votes scandal rather than face a FIFA ethics probe, had steadfastly clung to power in his own country despite a succession of further damaging allegations about his conduct.
Time finally caught up with the one-time CONCACAF President, arguably the most discredited senior figure in the history of football politics, when delegates at CONCACAF’s congress in Panama heard how Warner, who ran the confederation for over 20 years, had tricked the region, which represents football in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, out of ownership of a $26m Centre of Excellence in Port of Spain.
Warner and one-time CONCACAF general secretary Chuck Blazer, the one-time double act who fell out spectacularly and ended up as bitter foes, were denounced as “fraudulent in their management” of CONCACAF in a 113-page independent audit carried out by David Simmons, a former Barbados chief justice who heads CONCACAF’s Integrity Committee. The report found that Warner did not disclose to CONCACAF or FIFA that the Centre of Excellence was built on land owned by his companies. Warner, the audit said, had “deceived persons and organisations” into believing the facility was CONCACAF’s and not his. He was also accused of misappropriating at least $15m by compensating himself with CONCACAF funds without authorisation after his last contract expired in July 1998.
Delivering what he insisted were “cold hard facts” Warner responded by declaring he had never used politics “to enrich my wealth or fatten my bank accounts”.
He insisted his conduct was at all times honest and that he was in fact responsible for boosting CONCACAF’s Caribbean members, turning them from “the butt of international ridicule” into established FIFA members.
“I held a position and a level of power, which I never abused,” said Warner. “When I became President of CONCACAF I was given a table, two chairs and $40,000 to work with from the old Administration. When I resigned from CONCACAF there was some $37 million in the bank, three offices, and unmeasured goodwill.”
“During the period 1992 to 2011, no other President of any Confederation brought more countries to FIFA than I did. I never had an elitist policy. As President, my goal was to include and embrace every island state.”
Taking a totally unnecessary veiled swipe at his successor, Jeffrey Webb, of the Cayman Islands, Warner added: “It is informative to note that the old CONCACAF had refused the Cayman Islands membership three times before I became its President. When I became President….I made Cayman Islands a member of CONCACAF and of FIFA. And today, that very same President of Cayman Islands is the President of CONCACAF, though he may have conveniently forgotten how he came to be there.”
Remarkably, Warner, for all his protestations about being unfairly persecuted, also used the meeting to denounce FIFA President Sepp Blatter whom, he claimed, had been “the most hated FIFA official by both the European and African Confederations” back in the late 1990s.
“Without my CONCACAF support at the FIFA elections, Blatter would never have
seen the light of day as President of FIFA,” Warner charged.
Revealing a painstakingly detailed sequence of events, Warner also strongly denied he had abused his power with regard to the Centre of Excellence.
“There was no ambiguity. There was no uncertainty. There was no secret in my dealings towards and with Dr Havelange and the Centre of Excellence. So the Centre of Excellence was built, first by a loan that was given to Jack Warner that was converted into a grant and by further assistance from Dr Havelange after whom I named the Centre. The original copies of these letters are supposed to be in the possession of CONCACAF.
“Were these letters disclosed to the CONCACAF Integrity Committee headed by Sir David Simmons? I don’t know. Sir David Simmons and his committee in their Integrity Committee report said they based their conclusions on the documents and testimonies that were made available to them. Therefore, if these documents which are in the possession of CONCACAF were never disclosed to the Simmons committee and to the investigators, would you not agree that the conclusions formed by the committee are incorrect and that the committee has been deliberately misled into maligning Jack Warner?”
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