Raphael John-Lall

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) re­grets that world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA has ap­par­ent­ly closed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to bribery al­le­ga­tions against Jack Warn­er with­out for­mal­ly clear­ing his name.TT­TI's me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day fol­lowed a state­ment from FI­FA which said it had closed all in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volv­ing Warn­er af­ter he de­clared that he had re­signed from all in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball po­si­tions he held.Last month, Warn­er was sus­pend­ed pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to claims that he and a FI­FA pres­i­den­tial chal­lenger Mo­hamed Bin Ham­mam had of­fered fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives to mem­bers of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU).On May 29, the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee had stat­ed that Warn­er and Ham­mam would be ini­tial­ly sus­pend­ed for 30 days.

TT­TI said that it was "un­sat­is­fac­to­ry" that the rep­u­ta­tion of a se­nior min­is­ter in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment has been called in­to ques­tion by ac­cu­sa­tions re­port­ed ex­ten­sive­ly in the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia and that in­ves­ti­ga­tions have been end­ed with­out these ac­cu­sa­tions hav­ing been with­drawn or found false.TT­TI rec­om­mends that in the ab­sence of any pub­lic with­draw­al of the ac­cu­sa­tions, an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion be un­der­tak­en with the ob­jec­tive of clear­ing the Min­is­ter's name as it is im­por­tant that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment not be seen with any form of cor­rup­tion whether proven or im­plied.

"The code of con­duct of min­is­ters and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should be re­viewed in the light of this mat­ter so that the lessons learned be used to clar­i­fy and im­prove them. Oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions still un­der­way in­to whether the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go have been bro­ken should be com­plet­ed and ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion tak­en to bring this mat­ter to a sat­is­fac­to­ry con­clu­sion," the re­lease stat­ed.