For­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent and pres­i­dent of CON­CA­CAF, Jack Warn­er, was warned by the CON­CA­CAF gen­er­al sec­re­tary that the pay­ment of the ex­pens­es for the spe­cial meet­ing of re­gion­al foot­ball del­e­gates at the Hy­att by Mo­hammed Bin Ham­mam "would raise eth­i­cal is­sues." This is ac­cord­ing to the re­port of the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee of May 29, which was made avail­able to the Guardian yes­ter­day. The re­port was leaked on the same day that the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that Warn­er, who now serves as Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, was stripped of the Trans­port port­fo­lio by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­cause he was more pop­u­lar than she was.

Warn­er an­nounced that he was re­sign­ing from all of his foot­ball post on June 20 be­fore the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee con­clud­ed its in­quiry in­to the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of bribery al­le­ga­tions against him. Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion meant that FI­FA dropped the charges against him. Those charges in­clud­ed that he or­gan­ised a meet­ing at the Hy­att on May 10 and 11 at which bun­dles of US$40,000 were hand­ed to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU). In the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee re­port, Warn­er was quot­ed as as­sert­ing that Bin Ham­mam did not give him any mon­ey for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the del­e­gates, nei­ther did they dis­cuss any such mat­ter nor did he give any gift or in­duce­ment per­son­al­ly. The FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee re­port de­scribed the ar­gu­ments put for­ward by Warn­er as "mere self-serv­ing de­c­la­ra­tions."

The re­port stat­ed that Warn­er, who was de­scribed as "the ac­cused" through­out the re­port, "firm­ly dis­putes that mon­ey was dis­trib­uted to CFU (Caribbean Foot­ball Union) mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions or of­fi­cials at this meet­ing and that he in­di­cat­ed to the del­e­gates at­tend­ing the meet­ing that the mon­ey came from Mr Bin Ham­mam." The com­mit­tee said: "Notwith­stand­ing the above, at this stage the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee con­sid­ers that it ap­pears that on the oc­ca­sion of the CFU meet­ing of May 10 and 11, US$40,000 in cash were of­fered to each of CFU's mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions. "This as­sump­tion is based not on­ly on the de­tailed state­ments and af­fi­davits of the wit­ness­es men­tioned be­fore, but al­so on ob­jec­tive ev­i­dence in the form of pho­tographs and tran­scripts of cell­phone text mes­sages."

Ac­cord­ing to the com­mit­tee, the state­ments of sev­er­al CFU mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions pre­sent­ed by Warn­er to dis­pute the al­le­ga­tion that they were of­fered or had re­ceived mon­ey "are not suit­ed to dis­prove" the ev­i­dence pro­vid­ed by the Ba­hamas rep­re­sen­ta­tives or the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Bermu­da, Cay­man Is­lands and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands that they were of­fered gifts in the form of cash mon­ey. The FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee al­so deemed it "sim­ply in­con­ceiv­able" that Warn­er would not have known any­thing about the mon­ey of­fered to the at­ten­dees-giv­en his role in the CFU and his role in the con­text of the spe­cial meet­ing. The com­mit­tee said that it was of the opin­ion that Warn­er ap­peared to have had knowl­edge of the pay­ments made to the CFU mem­bers by Mr Bin Ham­mam.

"Giv­en that the ac­cused ap­pears to have had knowl­edge of the pay­ments made to the CFU mem­bers by Mr Bin Ham­man, it might seem al­so clear to the ac­cused that Mr Bin Ham­mam ap­pears to have in­tend­ed, by de­liv­er­ing the re­spec­tive mon­ey, to in­flu­ence the vot­ing be­hav­iour of the CFU mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions at the FI­FA pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on June 1 in his favour," ac­cord­ing to the com­mit­tee's re­port. It said that a "dif­fer­ent, rea­son­able ex­pla­na­tion" for the US$40,000 dis­trib­uted to each of the CFU mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions "has not been es­tab­lished, nor is any such ex­pla­na­tion ev­i­dent."