Em­bat­tled Fi­fa Vice Pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day he re­gained some hope in the pow­er of truth and trans­paren­cy af­ter the Eng­lish Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion cleared him and three oth­er Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tives of bribery al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against them by for­mer head of the FA, Lord Tries­man. Last month, Tries­man, who led the FA in its 2018 World Cup bid un­til last May, claimed that Warn­er, Nico­las Leoz, Ri­car­do Teix­eira and Worawi Maku­di had en­gaged in "im­prop­er and un­eth­i­cal" con­duct. Tries­man made the ac­cu­sa­tion dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary in­quiry that was try­ing to de­ter­mine why Eng­land lost the bid for host­ing the 2018 World Cup. It was award­ed to Rus­sia. In tes­ti­mo­ny to a com­mit­tee of the House of Com­mons in Lon­don, Tries­man had ac­cused Warn­er of ask­ing for a bribe of £2.5m to build a school in Trinidad and an­oth­er £500,000 to buy Haiti's World Cup TV rights.

How­ev­er, an in­de­pen­dent re­port com­mis­sioned by the FA, and con­duct­ed by James Dinge­mans QC, ex­on­er­at­ed the four. Dinge­mans has been re­tained by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions to ap­pear be­fore the Privy Coun­cil, in­clud­ing the Trin­i­ty Cross mat­ter and the most re­cent Abu Bakr ap­peal. Dinge­mans is the head of the 3 Hare Court cham­bers in Lon­don, mem­bers of which are work­ing with Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj to bring a law­suit against the Gov­ern­ment in the Cli­co mat­ter. "All four are com­plete­ly clean," said Fi­fa gen­er­al sec­re­tary Jerome Val­cke yes­ter­day and a news re­lease on the FI­FA Web site said that the world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body had "found no el­e­ments in this re­port which would prompt the open­ing of any ethics pro­ceed­ings." Warn­er said the re­port con­firmed what he had been say­ing since the "fal­la­cious and ma­li­cious al­le­ga­tions were made."

Warn­er said con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ments had pre­vent­ed cer­tain peo­ple from telling all about the source of the al­le­ga­tions against him. He said the en­tire mat­ter was a con­spir­a­cy and main­tains he has done no wrong. He said the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee, which is to hear the bribery mat­ter against him, has abused its pow­er and was "a far cry from what such a body should be ex­hibit­ing." Warn­er added: "It must have pained Mr Blat­ter (Fi­fa Pres­i­dent) and Mr Val­cke to read this re­port. But the fact which can­not be changed is, as Val­cke de­clared, all four are com­plete­ly clean."