In law, a person is innocent until proven guilty. Nevertheless, there is a strong sense that in the court of public opinion, in Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean and around the world, Jack Warner, the former regional football supremo and International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) vice-president, is already guilty of the charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering levied against him in a US federal court.
Mr Warner is, of course, no stranger to controversy and there have been myriad previous allegations against him of corruption and all sorts of football-related scams. In his native Trinidad and Tobago, these go back at least to the World Cup play-off match in Port of Spain, in 1989, against the USA, when more tickets were sold than there were seats in the stadium. Then, when Trinidad and Tobago eventually made it to the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany, Trinidad Express journalist Lasana Liburd revealed how Simpaul Travel, the preferred travel partner of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF), had been allocated all of the country’s World Cup tickets and was selling them as part of a package at exorbitant prices.
Mr Warner denied any conflict of interest arising from his close involvement with FIFA, the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) of which he was president, the TTFF, for whom he was a special adviser, and Simpaul, which he owned. As for Mr Liburd, FIFA denied him accreditation to cover the World Cup matches in Germany.
More notoriously, after 2006, through the work of British investigative journalist, Andrew Jennings and the BBC Panorama programme, Mr Warner was alleged to have repeatedly used his position as a football powerbroker for his personal enrichment.
Things seemed to come to a head on May 10, 2011, when former English Football Association chairman Lord David Triesman told a British House of Commons Select Committee that Mr Warner, by now his country’s Works and Transport Minister, as well as Chairman of the United National Congress (UNC), the dominant party in the People’s Partnership (PP) government, and reputedly one of the UNC’s main financiers, had asked for “favours” in return for securing CONCACAF’s 35 votes in support of England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup finals. These favours included a £2.5 million “donation” purportedly to build an educational facility in Trinidad and £500,000 to buy the television rights to the 2010 World Cup for Haiti, so that games could be shown on big screens to survivors of the January 2010 earthquake.
Coincidentally, Lord Triesman was giving evidence on the same day that Mr Warner, as President of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU), was allegedly dispensing 26 gifts of US$40,000, in unmarked, brown envelopes, to CFU representatives attending a meeting at the Trinidad Hyatt Hotel, to promote Qatari Mohamed bin Hammam’s FIFA presidential bid. On Tuesday last, the Trinidad Express reported that US investigators are now saying that Mr Warner also collected a US$1.2 million bribe from Mr bin Hammam for arranging the cash-for-votes meeting.
On May 29, 2011, a FIFA ethics committee suspended Mr Warner and Mr bin Hammam from all involvement in football pending the outcome of their findings, but Mr Warner avoided further investigation and sanction by resigning from all his positions in international football on June 20. Two years later, however, in April 2013, a CONCACAF integrity committee concluded that Mr Warner had committed fraud against CONCACAF and FIFA.
Even though the CONCACAF report finally precipitated his resignation from Trinidad and Tobago’s cabinet (by then he was Minister of National Security), from the UNC and from parliament, Mr Warner, undeterred, founded his own party and was re-elected as an independent MP, continuing to proclaim his innocence. Indeed, he has always dismissed all the allegations against him, variously as “foolishness” and conspiracies aimed at denigrating black people and developing countries. He has even, more laughably, blamed “Zionism” for the latest accusations. And until now, there have always been people, predominantly in Trinidad and Tobago but also in other parts of the Caribbean, willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Well, even those who are most favourably inclined towards Mr Warner must surely blanch at what must now be the most damning of all the allegations. A BBC report this week reminded people that, in 2012, Mr Warner was suspected of having diverted US$750,000 in emergency funds donated by FIFA and the Korean Football Association intended for victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake for his “personal use”. According to US investigators, that money is still unaccounted for.
It is always possible to stoop lower but Trinidad and Tobago’s Attorney General Garvin Nicholas has, for now, best captured the overwhelming feeling of revulsion at this particular allegation: “I think if Jack Warner actually stole money that was meant for Haiti, that is a most despicable crime.”
