ASHA JAVEED and NIGEL SI­MON

Had he not quit his FI­FA's vice-pres­i­den­tial post, Jack Warn­er would have been found guilty of cor­rup­tion.

That's the con­clu­sion of a mem­ber of FI­FA's Ethics Com­mit­tee, Son­dre Kaafjord. He in­sist­ed the con­se­quences for Warn­er are the same, as if he had been con­vict­ed of cor­rup­tion-that he is out of foot­ball. A re­port of the com­mit­tee leaked to the Press As­so­ci­a­tion on Wednes­day said there was over­whelm­ing ev­i­dence that Warn­er, who quit all foot­ball ac­tiv­i­ties on Mon­day, pri­or to a leaked re­port to the As­so­ci­a­tion Press which con­clud­ed he was "an ac­ces­so­ry to cor­rup­tion." For his part, Warn­er has con­demned the leak of the re­port as part of an on­go­ing "ma­li­cious agen­da" to de­stroy the co­he­sion of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU).

But Kaafjord's com­ments didn't mir­ror Warn­er's skep­ti­cism. "The re­sult is the same as if he had been banned by us-he's out of foot­ball...If we had sen­tenced him or banned him, the re­sult would have been just the same," he told the Press As­so­ci­a­tion. "If Warn­er were to take part in foot­ball again, the case will be re­opened im­me­di­ate­ly." Kaafjord, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Nor­way Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion, told the Press As­so­ci­a­tion that FI­FA had no choice but to drop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion once Warn­er had quit-but con­firmed the Ethics Com­mit­tee's re­port's con­clu­sions and said Warn­er had agreed to be a wit­ness in the on­go­ing case against bin Ham­mam. Mean­while, Qatari bin Ham­man in­sists there's no wrong­do­ing on his part de­spite the re­port stat­ing there is "over­whelm­ing ev­i­dence" that he used bribery in his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

With Warn­er's ressig­na­tion from FI­FA, on­ly bin Ham­mam stands ac­cused of pay­ing mon­ey to del­e­gates of the CFU in ex­change for votes at the Fi­fa pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on June 1. The Qatari pulled out of the run­ning for pres­i­den­cy once the al­le­ga­tions of bribery emerged, leav­ing Sepp Blat­ter to run and be re-elect­ed, un­op­posed, for a fourth term. Bin Ham­mam, 62, will face Fi­fa Ethics Com­mitte. The al­le­ga­tions arose af­ter bin Ham­mam en­ter­tained mem­bers of the CFU on May 10-11 at the Hy­att, Trinidad, dur­ing his failed Fi­fa pres­i­den­tial bid. The re­port says there is com­pelling ev­i­dence that bin Ham­mam paid mon­ey to CFU del­e­gates and that Warn­er fa­cil­i­tat­ed these pay­ments. Both Warn­er and bin Ham­mam were pro­vi­sion­al­ly sus­pend­ed on May 29.

"We con­clud­ed on May 29 that there was enough rea­son to sus­pend him for 30 days...It means that there was a prob­a­bil­i­ty that he was guilty," said Kaafjord. Kaafjord claims Warn­er had no choice but to quit foot­ball as he would have been thrown out of the game for his part in the bribery scan­dal at FI­FA.

"But in ju­di­cial lan­guage un­til you are ac­tu­al­ly found guilty you are pre­sumed to be in­no­cent...That is a ba­sic prin­ci­ple of law," he said. "We are not en­ti­tled to go fur­ther with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion ac­cord­ing to Swiss law -if he is not a mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion any more we have no right to go fur­ther. "But the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will con­tin­ue be­cause bin Ham­mam is part of the same case and Warn­er has said he will be a wit­ness in the bin Ham­mam case." On Mon­day, Warn­er stunned the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty by re­sign­ing from his Fi­fa po­si­tion, as pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union and as pres­i­dent of Con­ca­caf.

As a re­sult, he was cleared of all bribery al­le­ga­tions and left FI­FA "pre­sumed in­no­cent." How­ev­er, Kaafjord said the out­come was the same as a ban. Warn­er had said his res­ig­na­tion from his foot­ball posts would al­low him to fo­cus on his du­ties as T&T's Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter. On Wednes­day, Warn­er point­ed out that af­ter his "self-de­ter­mined res­ig­na­tion," FI­FA dis­con­tin­ued its Ethics Com­mit­tee pro­ce­dure with the pre­sump­tion of main­tained in­no­cence. "It is now ev­i­dent that there are those in a sec­tion of the FI­FA fra­ter­ni­ty who are not on­ly patho­log­i­cal­ly men­da­cious, but in the face of FI­FA's stat­ed po­si­tion and its vol­un­tary recog­ni­tion of my con­tri­bu­tion to world foot­ball and by de­f­i­n­i­tion to FI­FA, will stop at no length to de­stroy my lega­cy and desta­bilise the Caribbean re­gion whose in­ter­ests I have al­ways vig­or­ous­ly ad­vo­cat­ed," he stat­ed.