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Saturday, May 3, 2025

Warner: Blatter's 'gifts' will turn stomachs

by

20111016

For­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent and cur­rent Min­is­ter of Works Jack Warn­er yes­ter­day said the Caribbean is pay­ing the price for stand­ing up to FI­FA pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter! Warn­er made the re­marks in a let­ter to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day in light of last Thurs­day's video record­ing in which a meet­ing in­volv­ing mem­bers of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union, was car­ried on the Lon­don Tele­graph. Warn­er said the video clip­ping which was sup­posed to be an ex­pos&ea­cute; of Jack Warn­er fell flat. He promised to speak out about his role in the FI­FA and the changes he sought to bring about while he served on the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee and as one of its vice pres­i­dents. "I will talk about the bit­ter elec­tions for the FI­FA pres­i­den­cy in 1998 when Sepp Blat­ter faced his most telling ri­val in Lennart Jo­hans­son and the de­tailed rea­son for the sup­port, which was of­fered to him by both Mo­hammed Bin Ham­mam and me.

"We took him on a world­wide cru­sade beg­ging for sup­port for him, and he won. "That was the first time I met the present Deputy Chair­man of FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee, Petrus Damaseb, at the time the pres­i­dent of the Namib­ia FA. I will tell the world what gift Bin Ham­mam gave to him then, which was not a bribe then as he has ruled to­day. With Bin Ham­mam's pri­vate plane, we did the same for Blat­ter again in 2002 when he faced Is­sa Hay­a­tou, in a most bru­tal elec­tion, and he won-a sec­ond time." Warn­er said his tsuna­mi will re­veal dis­cus­sions, which he and Bin Ham­mam held with Blat­ter fol­low­ing the 2002 elec­tions, ask­ing him to change the im­age of the FI­FA. "I will re­veal the cir­cum­stances un­der which I told Blat­ter that black­ness in foot­ball must not be on­ly on the field of play but al­so on the field of the FI­FA ad­min­is­tra­tion." Warn­er promised to talk about racism with­in FI­FA, as well as re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion. "I will talk about the Zion­ism, which prob­a­bly is the most im­por­tant rea­son why this acrid at­tack on Bin Ham­mam and me was mount­ed."

He said he will al­so talk about at­tempts he made to find out the salary of Blat­ter. He said: "In spite of serv­ing on the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee for over eight years, I was nev­er able to de­ter­mine the quan­tum of mon­ey giv­en to him for the of­fice of the pres­i­dent." Con­spir­a­cy against the CFU by its own mem­bers and the role of Chuck Blaz­er in the CON­CA­CAF will be al­so ex­posed, ac­cord­ing to Warn­er. Warn­er said the vin­dic­tive­ness by FI­FA against him will al­so be un­rav­elled. "The FI­FA has tried to muz­zle me with threats of a world­wide sus­pen­sion," said Warn­er. They have said that they will close down the FI­FA De­vel­op­ment Of­fice in Trinidad by year end. They have ad­vised that they will ter­mi­nate my son's 2012 con­tract at the end of this year. They have re­tak­en the World Cup TV Rights, a mat­ter for which they have not heard the last. They have re­fused to give me any of my 29-year pen­sion. They con­tin­ue to do such things like re­veal­ing a video in the hope that they can em­bar­rass me to lie down on my bel­ly. Nev­er, I re­peat, nev­er, re­gard­less of the con­se­quences."

Warn­er said the re­al "gifts" that Blat­ter gave to se­cure his two elec­tions will turn stom­achs in­side out. Warn­er ex­plained that of the eight FI­FA pres­i­dents, on­ly one was not a Eu­ro­pean-Dr Joao Have­lange, who was Brazil­ian. "Three were Eng­lish, one was Bel­gium, the in­cum­bent is Swiss and two were French. Is it that peo­ple of colour can­not ad­min­is­ter foot­ball? Or is it that on­ly Eu­ro­peans pos­sess the skill to do so? Is this why Pla­ti­ni is be­ing groomed as heir ap­par­ent? For the last FI­FA elec­tion, the last count be­fore the elec­tion showed that Blat­ter had 90 votes and Bin Ham­mam had 85 in a 209 FI­FA mem­ber­ship. Who­ev­er got 105 votes would have won. CON­CA­CAF has 35 votes of which the Caribbean has 25."

(WARN­ER'S LET­TER WILL BE CAR­RIED IN FULL IN TO­MOR­ROW'S GUARDIAN)


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