Chuck Blaz­er, the FI­FA of­fi­cial who blew the whis­tle on the biggest bribery scan­dal in the foot­ball body's his­to­ry, has launched a strong­ly-word­ed re­but­tal of a full-scale at­tack on him by for­mer col­league, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, de­scrib­ing it as "garbage" and "an amaz­ing work of fic­tion." In a let­ter to the Trinidad Guardian this week, Warn­er laid in­to Blaz­er and promised to pro­vide "de­tailed ac­counts" of a Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) of­fi­cial he claims was guilty of con­spir­a­cy against his own col­leagues, 16 of whom have been sanc­tioned by FI­FA's Ethics Com­mit­tee for their roles in the cash-for-votes events of May 10 and 11.

A record­ed tape of Warn­er ap­par­ent­ly telling CFU mem­bers that tak­ing mon­ey from Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam was ac­cept­able was used as part of the ev­i­dence seen by the Ethics Com­mit­tee. Warn­er, for­mer pres­i­dent of CON­CA­CAF, said the CFU of­fi­cial se­cret­ly taped the meet­ing for Blaz­er-and was re­ward­ed as a re­sult. Blaz­er, who is en route to Zurich for a se­ries of cru­cial FI­FA meet­ings which are due to be­gin to­mor­row, said Warn­er was sim­ply mak­ing things worse for him­self. "It is an amaz­ing work of fic­tion," Blaz­er said. "If Jack has demon­strat­ed any­thing dur­ing this process, it is that he says what­ev­er he wants and then sub­se­quent­ly the facts prove he was ly­ing...The tape is a great ex­am­ple of that.

"I wish I could take cred­it for hav­ing any­thing to do with the tape, but I didn't...At the time of the tap­ing, I hadn't even spo­ken with Jack. "In time, the source of the tape will come out, but I had noth­ing to do with it. "Re­gard­ing the oth­er garbage from Warn­er's mouth, since 1990 he had his per­son­al ac­coun­tant do the re­view of our books in New York. "If there was any­thing wrong, he would have had it re­port­ed to him and it would have been ad­dressed. "To the con­trary, each year we sub­mit­ted an au­dit­ed set of books to the con­gress and bi­en­ni­al bud­gets which were ac­cept­ed and ap­proved by the mem­ber­ship with great hap­pi­ness over our growth and de­vel­op­ment, to­geth­er with the fis­cal poli­cies that pro­vid­ed for am­ple re­serves and op­er­at­ing funds."

Al­so re­spond­ing to Warn­er's let­ter was FI­FA ethics com­mit­tee deputy chair­man Petrus Damaseb. He ac­cused Warn­er, of wag­ing a "smear cam­paign" against him. Warn­er claimed that Damaseb-who head­ed the com­mit­tee that presided over the ex­pul­sion of an­oth­er for­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent, Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam, from foot­ball for life-had re­ceived "gifts" from the ex­pelled Qatari of­fi­cial. He al­so al­leged that Fi­fa pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter used him and bin Ham­mam to of­fer sim­i­lar "gifts" while run­ning for the post in 1998 and 2002. "We took (Blat­ter) on a world­wide cru­sade beg­ging for sup­port for him and he won," Warn­er wrote.

"That was the first time I met the present deputy chair­man of Fi­fa's Ethics Com­mit­tee, Petrus Damaseb, at the time the pres­i­dent of the Namib­ia Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion. "I will tell the world what gift bin Ham­mam gave to him then, which was not a bribe then as he has ruled to­day." How­ev­er, Damaseb "rub­bished" Warn­er's al­le­ga­tions, which he be­lieves are part of his road to re­venge against FI­FA. "The on­ly thing I re­mem­ber is an in­vi­ta­tion to din­ner at the pala­tial res­i­dence of Mr bin Ham­mam while I was at­tend­ing a FI­FA con­gress in Qatar, to­geth­er with oth­er FA pres­i­dents, and a watch (a cus­tom­ary gift in foot­ball) which I still have and trea­sure and which I ac­cept­ed to be a gift to me as NFA pres­i­dent and a to­ken and ex­pres­sion of his hos­pi­tal­i­ty and friend­ship," Damaseb told The Namib­ian.

"As NFA pres­i­dent I re­ceived many watch­es as gifts ei­ther from host as­so­ci­a­tions or their func­tionar­ies or from Fi­fa," Damaseb said. "I was not the pres­i­dent of the NFA when Blat­ter was first elect­ed in 1998 and had nev­er met Blat­ter, Warn­er and bin Ham­mam while they were on a 'world­wide cru­sade,' as Warn­er puts it, for Blat­ter's elec­tion. "It is a pity that Warn­er has cho­sen to en­gage in a smear cam­paign found­ed on false­hoods."