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Saturday, March 15, 2025

13 CFU nations back Jack's bribery denial

by

20110601

De­tails con­tin­ue to emerge about the al­leged $1 mil­lion in bribes of­fered to 25 Caribbean as­so­ci­a­tions at a spe­cial meet­ing of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) in Trinidad ear­li­er this month.FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, who al­so is T&T's Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter, along with an­oth­er ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber, Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam, have been sus­pend­ed pend­ing a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tions.Ac­cord­ing to lat­est re­ports, five re­gion­al foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tions have told in­ves­ti­ga­tors they re­ject­ed the of­fers of in­di­vid­ual pay­ments of US$40,000 in $100 bills.How­ev­er, 13 of the as­so­ci­a­tions have writ­ten state­ments sup­port­ing Warn­er's de­nial any such of­fers were made.Caribbean foot­ball of­fi­cials have been warned by Chuck Blaz­er, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of Con­ca­caf (who was fired yes­ter­day) and the man who first re­vealed the bribery al­le­ga­tions, to pay back any cash they might have been giv­en dur­ing the con­tro­ver­sial meet­ing or face in­ves­ti­ga­tion.Pic­tures of some of the cash of­fered emerged on Mon­day, con­firm­ing the mon­ey was arranged in four $10,000 stacks in brown en­velopes.The pic­ture was tak­en by Fred Lunn, the Ba­hamas FA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who ini­tial­ly took the mon­ey be­fore call­ing his pres­i­dent, An­ton Sealey, to ask what to do.

Sealey or­dered him to take the pic­ture and re­turn the cash and then con­tact­ed Blaz­er to warn him of the bribery at­tempt.In his wit­ness state­ment, which forms part of the ev­i­dence filed to FI­FA, Lunn was one of the first to go up to the room where he was hand­ed a large brown en­ve­lope.He said in an af­fi­davit when he opened it "stacks of US $100 bills fell out on the ta­ble. I was stunned to see this cash."He texted Sealey, say­ing "a lot of the boys tak­ing the cash. This is sad giv­en the break­ing news on CNN. I'm tru­ly sur­prised it's hap­pen­ing at this con­fer­ence."In Lon­don that day, al­le­ga­tions that Qatar's bid team for the 2022 World Cup had paid bribes for votes had been made in Par­lia­ment.There al­so are re­ports Sim­paul Trav­el arranged trav­el for 50 del­e­gates to the meet­ing held in Trinidad, re­ceiv­ing up to $360,000 from bin Ham­mam.Sim­paul was pre­vi­ous­ly at the cen­tre of a World Cup tick­et-tout­ing scan­dal in 2006 that saw Warn­er rep­ri­mand­ed by FI­FA.Wit­ness state­ments and doc­u­ments that form the ba­sis of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­di­cate that Sim­paul was in­volved in ar­rang­ing flights and ho­tel rooms for del­e­gates.Del­e­gates were told they had to arrange their trav­el through the CFU, of which Warn­er is pres­i­dent, us­ing a form pro­vid­ed with the for­mal in­vi­ta­tion to the meet­ing.

The in­vi­ta­tion stat­ed that if del­e­gates did not book trav­el through the CFU they could not be guar­an­teed re­im­burse­ment.Sim­paul's in­volve­ment is en­dorsed by tes­ti­mo­ny from So­nia Bi­en-Aime, the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Turks and Caicos Is­lands Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, who is a key wit­ness to the en­quiry."Ms Bi­en-Aime stat­ed the air­line tick­et she re­ceived to at­tend the meet­ing had been sent by Sim­paul Trav­el in Trinidad," the re­port says.Al­though they are not ac­cused of any wrong­do­ing in this in­stance, the trav­el com­pa­ny was pre­vi­ous­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed by FI­FA af­ter it was re­vealed tick­ets for the 2006 World Cup in­tend­ed for Trinidad fans were chan­neled through the com­pa­ny and sold at a prof­it of around $1 mil­lion.Warn­er owned shares in the com­pa­ny and his son, Daryan, was a di­rec­tor.Warn­er re­ceived on­ly a rep­ri­mand for his in­volve­ment in the scan­dal and was re­quired to end fam­i­ly in­volve­ment in the com­pa­ny.Mean­while, Blaz­er said yes­ter­day he had re­port­ed Jack Warn­er for break­ing the rules of his sus­pen­sion from the world soc­cer body."I've sent a com­mu­ni­ca­tion to FI­FA," Blaz­er said in Zurich.Warn­er has been sus­pend­ed from all foot­ball-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty end­ing an en­quiry in­to bribery al­le­ga­tions but has been re­port­ed for breach­ing the terms of that ban.Blaz­er said the Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent had still been get­ting in­volved in the busi­ness of the con­fed­er­a­tion.He said Warn­er had been meet­ing as­so­ci­a­tions and a state­ment from act­ing Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent Lisle Austin had come from Warn­er's aide.Blaz­er said: "We have clear ev­i­dence of a vi­o­la­tion of his sus­pen­sion and we have re­port­ed that to the FI­FA sec­re­tary gen­er­al Jerome Val­cke."He has al­so been meet­ing with (Con­ca­caf) mem­bers, which is against the rules of the sus­pen­sion."


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