Fol­low­ing is the PNM's state­ment on the res­ig­na­tion of Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er as vice chair­man of FI­FA:As a Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go Mr Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion from FI­FA comes one year too late.His vol­un­tary with­draw­al from FI­FA oc­ca­sioned by the re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al scan­dal which saw the FI­FA pres­i­dent be­ing elect­ed un­op­posed is meant to pro­tect his po­si­tion in the Cab­i­net and pre­serve his con­trol of T&T foot­ball, a sce­nario which would not have been ten­able if a com­plet­ed FI­FA en­quiry re­sult­ed in any nec­es­sary sanc­tions against him by the world gov­ern­ing body of foot­ball.

It is be­cause the Op­po­si­tion al­ways un­der­stood that ethics and in­tegri­ty are alien con­cepts in the op­er­a­tions of FI­FA, which is wide­ly re­gard­ed as a cor­rupt or­gan­i­sa­tion, why we have fo­cused our at­ten­tion on de­ter­min­ing whether Trinidad and To­ba­go laws have been bro­ken by func­tionar­ies of FI­FA and the CFU who were al­leged by FI­FA to have con­duct­ed cor­rupt FI­FA busi­ness with­in our bor­ders.

Mr Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion from FI­FA must in no way de­ter the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice from pur­su­ing thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to de­ter­min­ing whether any per­sons may have bro­ken our cur­ren­cy laws or aid­ed and abet­ted oth­ers to so do.It is now to be seen whether FI­FA will co-op­er­ate with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in main­tain­ing FI­FA al­le­ga­tions against par­ties and sup­ply the Com­mis­sion­er with the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion or whether it will con­tin­ue to pro­tect "fam­i­ly mem­bers" in the finest tra­di­tions of the "cosa nos­tra" code of si­lence.