Short­ly af­ter he learnt that he had been sus­pend­ed by the Fi­fa ethics com­mit­tee for al­leged­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ing the pay­ment of US$40,000 to re­gion­al foot­ball of­fi­cials, Jack Warn­er, who is him­self on the Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee, is­sued a state­ment in which he un­leashed some ac­cu­sa­tions of his own. On Fri­day, speak­ing to jour­nal­ists dur­ing the Par­lia­ment's teabreak the CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent and spe­cial ad­vis­er to the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion had threat­ened a "foot­ball tsuna­mi."

I at­tend­ed the Fi­fa in­quiry (yes­ter­day) at 12 noon pur­suant to a re­quest made of me by Fi­fa to an­swer al­le­ga­tion made by Chuck Blaz­er, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of CON­CA­CAF. I have learned this evening via the me­dia that I have been pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed by the Fi­fa Ethics Com­mit­tee. This has come both as a shock and sur­prise to me. At the con­clu­sion of the in­quiry, I specif­i­cal­ly re­quest­ed that I be no­ti­fied of any de­ci­sion as I had learned via the me­dia be­fore at­tend­ing the hear­ing that a de­ci­sion would be hand­ed down at 5 pm. De­spite leav­ing my con­tact de­tails, up to this point, I still have not re­ceived any no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Fi­fa.

At the hear­ing, I in­di­cat­ed that I sub­mit­ted two writ­ten state­ments out­lin­ing my po­si­tion. I ex­pressed my dis­ap­point­ment with the way in which the in­quiry was con­duct­ed as I was giv­en less than 24 hours to sub­mit a state­ment for con­sid­er­a­tion by the com­mit­tee and, more­over, one of the five mem­bers of the com­mit­tee is from Uruguay and did not have the val­ue of a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of my or Mr bin Ham­mam's sub­mis­sion. This lack of trans­la­tion ser­vices brings in­to ques­tion the is­sue of due process. In ad­di­tion, Fi­fa did not have the cour­tesy to pro­vide me with copies of the al­le­ga­tions be­fore the hear­ing and it was on­ly dur­ing the hear­ing were the al­le­ga­tions read to me.

At the hear­ing, among oth­er things,I was asked about the spe­cial meet­ing with the CFU to hear Mr bin Ham­mam and whether such a meet­ing was nor­mal. I in­di­cat­ed that Pres­i­dent Blat­ter ear­li­er this year had held a sim­i­lar meet­ing in South Africa with 37 coun­tries and no ob­jec­tions had been made of that to date. In fact, this has been the prac­tice of Fi­fa in hold­ing meet­ings with mem­ber coun­tries be­fore elec­tions. I de­nied the al­le­ga­tions that I made state­ments at the CFU meet­ing about gifts be­ing giv­en by Mr bin Ham­mam. I al­so in­di­cat­ed that at the Mi­a­mi CON­CA­CAF con­gress on May 3, Mr Blat­ter made a gift of US$1 mil­lion to CON­CA­CAF to spend as it deems fit.

This an­noyed pres­i­dent Michel Pla­ti­ni who was present and he ap­proached sec­re­tary gen­er­al Jerome Val­cke com­plain­ing that Mr Blat­ter had no per­mis­sion from the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee to make this gift to which Jerome replied that he will find the mon­ey for Mr Blat­ter. I al­so in­di­cat­ed at the CFU meet­ing held in Trinidad on May 10 which was re­quest­ed by Mr bin Ham­mam, Fi­fa through Mr Blat­ter or­gan­ised gifts of lap­tops and pro­jec­tors to all mem­bers of the Caribbean and no ob­jec­tions have been made to­day of this to date. In my state­ment, I at­tached let­ters from 13 fed­er­a­tions whose mem­bers at­tend­ed the CFU meet­ing where the al­le­ga­tions of gifts were made.

These state­ments from the 13 mem­bers de­nied the al­le­ga­tions that have been made against me and any par­tic­i­pa­tion of these in­di­vid­u­als in the act com­plained of.While with re­gard to the al­le­ga­tion of pay­ment on­ly one state­ment was sub­mit­ted by Collins & Collins. On May 18, when I re­alised that the po­lit­i­cal bat­tle be­tween Blat­ter and bin Ham­mam was get­ting out of hand, I wrote sec­re­tary gen­er­al Val­cke, telling him, among oth­er things, that the out­come of the elec­tions may cause some frac­ture in the Arab world which we can ill-af­ford now and that I will like to ask bin Ham­mam to with­draw from the race. To which Jerome replied to me and I quote:

"For MBH, I nev­er un­der­stood why he was run­ning. If re­al­ly he thought he had a chance or just be­ing an ex­treme way to ex­press how much he does not like any­more JSB. Or he thought you can buy Fi­fa as they bought the WC. I have a bet since day one, he will with­draw but on June 1 af­ter his ten-minute speech. By do­ing so he can say he push Blat­ter to make new com­mit­ments,bla, bla bla,and get out un­der ap­plause. Be­fore means he is a loos­er. So...He will get some votes. Less than 60 to­day af­ter CAF sup­port. It will be the "coup de grace" if you would of­fi­cial­ly send a mes­sage as the CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent by say­ing CON­CA­CAF sup­ports unan­i­mous­ly. So I am not giv­ing you an ad­vice but just my feel­ing about what I think is the sit­u­a­tion."

De­spite the plea from SG Val­cke, I re­fused to give any ad­vice about how CON­CA­CAF will be vot­ing.

At no time dur­ing this mat­ter was I ever con­tact­ed by Mr Blaz­er nor did he con­tact the ex­ec­u­tive or the Emer­gency Com­mit­tee of the CON­CA­CAF and it is in­for­ma­tive for one to look at Mr Blaz­er's cred­i­bil­i­ty by re­fer­ring to the re­port of the NY Dis­trict Court judge in the mat­ter be­tween Mas­ter Card and Visa in the Fi­fa mat­ter of De­cem­ber 7, 2006. (Para 213) Mr Blaz­er's tes­ti­mo­ny was gen­er­al­ly with­out cred­i­bil­i­ty based on his at­ti­tude and de­meanor on his eva­sive an­swers on cross-ex­am­i­na­tion. (Para 214) Thus, for that rea­son and based on his eva­sive an­swers and his at­ti­tude and de­meanour, Mr Blaz­er's tes­ti­mo­ny as the March 14, 2006, Mar­ket­ing & TV AG Board meet­ing is re­ject­ed as fab­ri­cat­ed. The com­plaints made in this mat­ter are po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed against Mr bin Ham­mam and me and are de­signed, among oth­er things, to cause se­ri­ous prej­u­dice and dam­age to both Mr bin Ham­mam and my­self at one of the most crit­i­cal times for the Fi­fa.

It is al­so shock­ing that at the close of an in­quiry at around 5.47 pm when the de­ci­sion was al­ready de­liv­ered, new ev­i­dence in the form of a fax from the Puer­to Ri­co FF ap­pears mak­ing al­le­ga­tions which were treat­ed as part of the ev­i­dence in this mat­ter. This fur­ther demon­strates in the way the in­quiry was con­duct­ed and the prej­u­dice against me. The de­ci­sion to sus­pend me isan abuse of the process and achieves no re­al pur­pose as stat­ed in the de­ci­sion and again demon­strates the bias of this in­quiry.

I in­tend to say a lot more on this mat­ter short­ly. In the mean­time, I will vig­or­ous­ly de­fend my rep­u­ta­tion as well as the rep­u­ta­tion of the rest of the Caribbean mem­bers.

Re­spect­ful­ly sub­mit­ted

Sgd Jack Warn­er

Time­line: FI­FA cor­rup­tion scan­dal in the last year

FI­FA vice pres­i­dent, Trinidad's Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er was yes­ter­day pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed by the world foot­ball body, while pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter was cleared of any wrong­do­ing dur­ing his re-elec­tion cam­paign. Blat­ter's ri­val Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam, who with­drew from the race hours be­fore­hand, was al­so pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed. Here is a time­line of the re­cent cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions to hit Fi­fa as pro­vid­ed by the Reuters news agency:

Oc­to­ber 2010

• Britain's Sun­day Times news­pa­per claims two mem­bers of Fi­fa's ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee, Rey­nald Temarii of Tahi­ti and Amos Adamu of Nige­ria, of­fered to sell their votes in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup host­ing con­test to un­der­cov­er news­pa­per re­porters.

• Temarii and Adamu pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed by Fi­fa's ethics com­mit­tee, pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Four oth­er of­fi­cials, all for­mer ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers, are al­so pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed.

No­vem­ber 2010

• Temarii is banned for one year and fined 5,000 Swiss francs ($5,887) for breach­es of the ethics code. Adamu banned for three years and fined 10,000 Swiss francs for breach­ing five ar­ti­cles of the ethics code, in­clud­ing one on bribery. The four oth­ers all banned and fined.

• The ethics com­mit­tee de­cides al­le­ga­tions of vote-trad­ing be­tween Spain/Por­tu­gal, who are bid­ding for 2018, and Qatar, who are bid­ding for 2022, are un­found­ed.

• Fi­fa dis­miss­es al­le­ga­tions made by a British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC) pro­gram against three more ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers, say­ing the mat­ters had al­ready been in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Swiss au­thor­i­ties and the case was closed.

De­cem­ber 2010

• Rus­sia is award­ed the 2018 World Cup while the 2022 tour­na­ment is con­tro­ver­sial­ly award­ed to Qatar de­spite Fi­fa's own tech­ni­cal re­port say­ing that high tem­per­a­tures could pose a health risk to play­ers, of­fi­cials and spec­ta­tors. Temarii and Adamu are not re­placed and the de­ci­sion was made by on­ly 22 mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee.

May 2011

• A British par­lia­men­tary in­quiry in­to why Eng­land failed to se­cure the 2018 fi­nals told by MP Dami­an Collins that there was ev­i­dence from the Sun­day Times news­pa­per that Is­sa Hay­a­tou of Cameroon and Jacques Anouma of the Ivory Coast were paid by Qatar. At the same hear­ing, for­mer Eng­lish Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion chair­man David Tries­man ac­cus­es Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers Jack Warn­er, Ri­car­do Teix­eira, Nico­las Leoz and Worawi Maku­di of ask­ing for favours in re­turn for their votes. Tries­man al­leges that Warn­er had re­quest­ed as­sis­tance with build­ing afoot­ball train­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Trinidad worth US$2.5m. FI­FA said yes­ter­day that all four men have been cleared of the al­le­ga­tions in an in­de­pen­dent re­port com­mis­sioned by the FA.

• An ethics in­ves­ti­ga­tion is opened in­to Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam, Blat­ter's on­ly chal­lenger in the Fi­fa pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on June 1, and Jack Warn­er. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­cerns a meet­ing of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union ear­li­er in the month.

• Blat­ter is al­so sum­moned to ap­pear be­fore the ethics com­mit­tee hear­ing fol­low­ing a re­quest from Bin Ham­mam be­cause he may have been aware of the cash pay­ments.

• Bin Ham­mam with­draws his can­di­da­cy hours be­fore the ethics com­mit­tee hear­ing.

• An ethics com­mit­tee hear­ing clears Blat­ter but pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pends Bin Ham­mam and Warn­er pend­ing a fur­ther in­quiry in­to al­le­ga­tions they paid Caribbean del­e­gates $40,000 each to vote for Bin Ham­mam in the elec­tion.