Sus­pend­ed FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er told jour­nal­ists in Zurich that he blames the Pres­i­dent of FI­FA, the world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body, for the al­le­ga­tions made against him: "At the end of the day, Blat­ter has to be stopped." Warn­er re­it­er­at­ed that he is about to un­leash a "tsuna­mi" on the foot­ball world, telling jour­nal­ists in Zurich that they had not seen any­thing yet con­cern­ing the rev­e­la­tions that Qatar had "bought" the 2022 World Cup. Hold­ing up the e-mail which quot­ed FI­FA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Jerome Val­cke on the is­sue of Qatar 2022, Warn­er said: "You don't have to be­lieve me, you don't have to like me, no­body has to eat with me, drink with me or sleep with me but, Je­sus Christ, take the truth when you see it." These ar­gu­ments may now be­gin to dam­age the or­gan­i­sa­tion's com­mer­cial in­ter­ests as, ear­li­er on Mon­day, two of FI­FA's largest spon­sors - Co­ca-Co­la and Adi­das - ex­pressed con­cern at the wide­ly pub­li­cised in-fight­ing. "The cur­rent al­le­ga­tions be­ing raised are dis­tress­ing and bad for the sport," a Co­ca-Co­la spokesper­son told the BBC. "We have every ex­pec­ta­tion that FI­FA will re­solve this sit­u­a­tion in an ex­pe­di­ent and thor­ough man­ner."

An Adi­das spokesman said: "The neg­a­tive tenor of the pub­lic de­bate around FI­FA at the mo­ment is nei­ther good for foot­ball nor for Fi­fa and its part­ners." FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers Mo­hamed Bin Ham­mam and Jack Warn­er have been sus­pend­ed pend­ing a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions that they arranged for US$1 mil­lion in bribes to be of­fered to 25 Caribbean as­so­ci­a­tions at a spe­cial meet­ing in Trinidad ear­li­er this month. Mean­while, the Tele­graph news­pa­per re­port­ed last night that a foot­ball of­fi­cial from a Cari­com coun­try had tak­en a cam­era-phone pho­to­graph of piles of mon­ey of four US$10,000 stacks con­tained in brown en­velopes. The pho­to­graph was ini­tial­ly tak­en by the of­fi­cial who called an­oth­er of­fi­cial to ask him what to do, the Tele­graph re­port­ed. The oth­er of­fi­cial or­dered him to take the pic­ture and re­turn the cash, and then con­tact­ed CON­CA­CAF gen­er­al sec­re­tary Chuck Blaz­er to warn him of the bribery at­tempt.

"In his wit­ness state­ment, which forms part of the ev­i­dence filed to FI­FA, the of­fi­cial was one of the first to go up to the room where he was hand­ed a large brown en­ve­lope. When he opened it 'stacks of US $100 notes fell out and on to the ta­ble. I was stunned to see this cash,' he said in an af­fi­davit. "He texted Sealey say­ing "a lot of the boys tak­ing the cash. This is sad giv­en the break­ing news on the TV, CNN ... I'm tru­ly sur­prised it's hap­pen­ing at this con­fer­ence" [sic]. Mean­while, Lisle Austin, a 74-year-old Bar­ba­di­an na­tion­al, was yes­ter­day el­e­vat­ed as act­ing Pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral and Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Foot­ball (Con­ca­caf), ac­cord­ing to a state­ment sent to lo­cal me­dia hous­es by an em­ploy­ee of sus­pend­ed Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent, Jack Warn­er. Austin's sub­stan­tive po­si­tion is vice pres­i­dent, a po­si­tion he has held since 1992. Austin re­places Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, who was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed by FI­FA's Ethics Com­mit­tee on Sun­day af­ter a pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry in­to charges of bribery lev­elled against him and Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber, Mo­hammed bin Ham­mam.

Checks with the Con­ca­caf of­fice in New York re­vealed that the gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball in the Caribbean, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and North Amer­i­ca had not com­ment­ed or sent out a re­lease at any time re­gard­ing this mat­ter. And the first di­rec­tive is­sued by Austin on as­sum­ing of­fice on Mon­day was for Con­ca­caf to cease, im­me­di­ate­ly, all con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments with the law firm Collins and Collins.

Austin has called on Con­ca­caf Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Chuck Blaz­er to ex­plain with­in 48 hours, what au­thor­i­ty he had to uni­lat­er­al­ly hire the firm to in­ves­ti­gate al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct by Con­ca­caf mem­bers.

Austin made the re­quest via a let­ter to Blaz­er's ho­tel in Zurich. Austin al­so called on Blaz­er to ex­plain "the pro­ce­dure and ra­tio­nale be­hind de­ci­sions tak­en to­day as it re­lates to the at­ten­dance of to­mor­row's (to­day's) Fi­fa Con­gress.