By Paul Nicholson
May 22 – Former CONCACAF president Jack Warner has hit back at the confederation’s Integrity Committee report that blackened his name even further following the cash for votes scandal that lead to his resignation from the sport in 2011.
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 $26 million facility was CONCACAF’s and not his. He was also accused of misappropriating at least $15 million by compensating himself with CONCACAF funds without authorisation after his last contract expired in July 1998.
Warner enlisted three legal luminaries to examine the report. All three came
to conclusions that the report was flawed, could not have been independent and
should not have been released publicly before offering the “accused” the possibility to comment.
The opinions question the processes that were undertaken by the Integrity Committee in coming to their damning conclusions as “prosecutor, judge and jury “.
Retired Justice of Appeal Zainool Hosein in his opinion said that there was “significant concern” about the “true character” of the investigating committee even though it was formed by men of “high distinction and integrity who have held high judicial office in their countries”. “But the Forum constituted by the triumvirate was sponsored and selected by CONCACAF by whom they were remunerated to investigate, impartially adjudicate and make conclusions in respect of issues and matters allegedly affecting CONCACAF.”
He goes on to say that “The committee, in full recognition that it had no power to summon or require attendance of anyone before it, misdirected itself in proceeding informally to make findings of criminal nature in contravention of the presumption of innocence of Mr Warner, his right not to self-incriminate before a forum purporting to act as a court of law and placing reliance in totality on unsworn information.”
Andrew Mitchell, QC, takes his opinion a step further stating: “To have moved straight to conclusions based on apparent legal ingredients of criminal conduct smacks of the committee being prosecutor, judge and jury without defence representation, there used to be a phrase applied to such processes: Kangaroo Court.”
Mitchell concludes by saying that “this report is nothing but a series of unproven issues, which…taken together, have caused the right thinking person, in the Maxi Taxi, to conclude that all is not as clear as the Committee is suggesting and that in reality there is an equally compelling case the other way.”
Bertram Commissiong, QC, is similarly, if not more critical. “The findings of the report are questionable, unreliable and arrived at by methods foreign to and at odds with established principles of procedural fairness and natural justice.”
Warner released the legal opinions a day before he was set to deliver his nomination papers to contest the Chaguanas West seat for election to the Trinidad and Tobago parliament. Last month Warner resigned from the parliament in a long but explosive public speech titled ‘Straight Talk’, that covered local politics in Trinidad but also his work within FIFA and the correspondence he had had with FIFA concerning the Port of Spain Centre of Excellence. Correspondence that the CONCACAF integrity committee would appear not to have been aware of, or taken into account, when they came to their judgement, say the QCs who critiqued the CONCACAF report..
Warner has continually maintained that he is the victim of a witchhunt, though the circumstantial evidence has never stacked up in his favour, even if the accusations have been centred more around US legal interpretations of “preponderence of the evidence” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
Commissiong is strongly supportive of Warner in his written opinion, saying: “Indeed, the evidence and allegations against Jack Warner are no more serious than those against other leading officials in FIFA and CONCACAF,” he says, and taking it a step further saying Warner had been “unfairly targeted due to his allegiance to a rival candidate to the incumbent in that (FIFA presidential) election.” He said that the CONCACAF report “appears to be shot through with malice and reeks of vindictive politicking”.
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