Rhon­dor Dowlat

T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent, Ray­mond Tim Kee is now cor­rob­o­rat­ing at least part of the claims by for­mer Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent, Caribbean Foot­ball union pres­i­dent and TTFF ad­vis­er Jack Warn­er that he (Warn­er) fund­ed the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign.

There is cur­rent­ly a war of words be­tween Warn­er and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship over his claims that he fund­ed the par­ty's elec­tion cam­paign with mon­ey sourced through his Fi­fa deal­ings.

While Warn­er is stick­ling to those claims and has al­leged­ly pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion to a group of at­tor­neys to prove this, the UNC con­tin­ues to de­ny the claim.

But speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Tim Kee said he knew for a fact that for­mer Warn­er used his own mon­ey to fund at least one UNC event which he (Tim Kee) had knowl­edge of.

Tim Kee was re­fer­ring to an in­voice he al­leged­ly re­ceived from a pop­u­lar ho­tel and con­fer­ence cen­tre in Port-of-Spain which had billed the TTFA for a "UNC Ban­quet Din­ner."

Al­though ini­tial­ly ad­mit­ting to not re­al­ly want­i­ng to let the "cat-out-of-the-bag," Tim Kee said, "I don't want to make it an is­sue yet. I have to find the doc­u­ment first."

He added, "I know of this be­cause with the in­voice were some notes which in­di­cat­ed the items."

Tim Kee al­so as­sured that he knew for a fact that Warn­er took mon­ey from the TTFF which went straight to the UNC.

"The man took our mon­ey and gave it to pol­i­tics," he said.

Tim Kee said Warn­er was com­mit­ted to the UNC cause in 2010.

"Know­ing Mr Warn­er as I do, he does not give up un­til he comes to the end of his ef­fort and all strate­gies, for which he is well known, were ap­plied in that ef­fort to put the UNC par­ty in­to pow­er," he said, say­ing he was sure Warn­er used the monies he would have ac­quired from Fi­fa to spend in the 2010 elec­tion.

"I would think it is pub­lic knowl­edge when he be­came chair­man, he had a goal and that goal was to take the UNC par­ty in­to gov­ern­ment," he said.

Sim­i­lar foot­ball strat­e­gy

Tim Kee ex­plained that Warn­er had a sim­i­lar be­hav­iour and strat­e­gy in foot­ball and in the ear­li­er years mort­gaged his house in a bid to raise mon­ey for foot­ball and to take care of some oth­er ex­pens­es in re­la­tion to the sport.

"That was the sort of pas­sion he (Warn­er) had demon­strat­ed over the years for lo­cal foot­ball. What hap­pens sub­se­quent to those years I am not in a po­si­tion to con­verse on and com­ment," he said.

Dur­ing an ad­dress to the na­tion on Wednes­day night, Warn­er, a for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and now po­lit­i­cal leader of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty, re­it­er­at­ed that there was a link be­tween Fi­fa's mil­lions and the PP's 2010 cam­paign.

He dis­closed that he had com­piled a se­ries of cheques and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments that would cor­rob­o­rate his fi­nan­cial sup­port to the PP's suc­cess­ful gen­er­al cam­paign in 2010. The doc­u­ments, Warn­er said, were al­ready in the hands of at­tor­neys.

Warn­er is cur­rent­ly out on $2.5 mil­lion bail af­ter he ap­peared in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates Court on charges of cor­rup­tion and rack­e­teer­ing con­spir­a­cy in re­la­tion to his deal­ings with Fi­fa, stem­ming out of an in­dict­ment by the US gov­ern­ment, which is now seek­ing to ex­tra­dite him to the US to face those charges.