Richard Lord

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that the voice on an ex­clu­sive video post­ed on the In­ter­net by the Tele­graph news­pa­per in Lon­don was his voice. In the video, Warn­er urged fel­low Caribbean of­fi­cials to ac­cept US$40,000 cash gifts from Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam, a for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body FI­FA. Warn­er was at the time speak­ing at a meet­ing of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union on May 11 at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, in the run-up to FI­FA's pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. The gifts were an al­leged pay­ment for Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) mem­bers to sup­port bin Ham­mam's can­di­da­cy.

Warn­er was sus­pend­ed pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent. He sub­se­quent­ly re­signed as FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent. The charges brought against bin Ham­mam were heard yes­ter­day. Warn­er, who con­tin­ued his reg­u­lar gov­ern­ment sched­ule yes­ter­day, was ques­tioned dur­ing a tour of Diego Mar­tin yes­ter­day. He ad­mit­ted to telling the del­e­gates at the meet­ing to take the mon­ey and use it for de­vel­op­ment. Warn­er said the tapes were doc­tored. "I say it is my voice and the tape had been spliced with oth­er things that I have said and I am go­ing to re­veal (prove) that," he told re­porters at Vic­to­ria Gar­dens yes­ter­day.

He said he would not de­ny any­thing that he had said about the en­tire mat­ter. He ad­mit­ted to know­ing the per­son who pro­duced the video. "I know who made it, son, I know who did every­thing, I know the tim­ing and so on, but why all you so pre­cip­i­tate?" he said. "Wait nah man, wait." "When I am pre­pared to speak (in de­tail) the whole world will lis­ten." Asked why was he re­fus­ing to speak, Warn­er re­spond­ed sharply: "I am not re­fus­ing to speak. Why should I speak when bin Ham­mam has a case? Why should I in any way jeop­ar­dise his po­si­tion?"

Warn­er said the en­tire mat­ter was "a piece of cake" for him to deal with. He in­sist­ed that he had been the longest serv­ing mem­ber of FI­FA and he was the on­ly one who had the au­thor­i­ty to speak out on FI­FA. He said at the right time he will speak out be­cause there was need for se­ri­ous change in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. In an ear­li­er re­lease, Warn­er said it was "rather in­ter­est­ing" that on the said day CFU del­e­gates were ap­pear­ing be­fore the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of FI­FA, the tape was re­leased to in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences. He said it was "tan­ta­mount to con­tempt be­cause it seeks to in­flu­ence in­ter­na­tion­al opin­ion against what is clear­ly a con­spir­a­cy against the CFU.

"So this leak is clear­ly sub ju­dice and con­trary to the very prin­ci­ples of law and jus­tice," he added. He said CFU del­e­gates "must be found guilty if Sepp Blat­ter (FI­FA pres­i­dent) is to ap­pear as an ho­n­ourable man weed­ing out cor­rup­tion in the FI­FA." Warn­er said the CFU must be the scape­goat. He said there was a Swiss con­spir­a­cy in FI­FA. "Clear­ly the Swiss seems to have a moral­i­ty of its own," he said. The Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter said all he want­ed was "a few more mo­ments of bliss­ful si­lence, as "in the near fu­ture, all will be re­vealed."