Derek Achong

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing for­mer Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er have been grant­ed per­mis­sion to cross-ex­am­ine wit­ness­es for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA) in his law­suit over dis­clo­sure of the le­gal fees paid by the State for still pend­ing ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against him.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion on Tues­day, High Court Judge Karen Reid par­tial­ly grant­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion by Warn­er’s lawyer Richard Jag­gasar. Jus­tice Reid not­ed that the pro­posed cross-ex­am­i­na­tion would be lim­it­ed, as she had no is­sue with the ex­pla­na­tions giv­en by the wit­ness­es over the fees that were paid.

How­ev­er, she not­ed that while the AGLA’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary shared cor­re­spon­dence sent to nine lo­cal and for­eign at­tor­neys, on­ly in­for­ma­tion in re­la­tion to sev­en of the at­tor­neys was sub­se­quent­ly dis­closed.

“The court finds that the dis­crep­an­cy has to be ex­plained,” she said. She al­so barred Warn­er’s lawyers from ques­tion­ing the wit­ness­es on the iden­ti­ties of the lawyers as she not­ed that she had to de­cide whether that was re­quired in the sub­stan­tive case.

As part of her pre­lim­i­nary de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Reid or­dered the State to pay Warn­er $5,200 in le­gal costs for the ap­pli­ca­tion de­spite an ob­jec­tion from Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau, who led the State’s le­gal team and point­ed out that Warn­er was on­ly par­tial­ly suc­cess­ful.

In 2015, the Unit­ed States sought to ex­tra­dite Warn­er to face 29 charges re­lat­ed to fraud, rack­e­teer­ing, and en­gag­ing in il­le­gal wire trans­fers while he held a po­si­tion in world foot­ball’s gov­ern­ing body.

The of­fences are al­leged to have tak­en place in the Unit­ed States, T&T, and oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions from 1990 to June 2011, when Warn­er quit Fi­fa af­ter be­ing sus­pend­ed. He is one of sev­er­al se­nior Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tives in­dict­ed on a se­ries of charges fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion in foot­ball con­duct­ed by the US Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) and US De­part­ment of Jus­tice in 2015. Sev­er­al of his for­mer col­leagues have plead­ed guilty to the charges and have been sen­tenced. The ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings were put on hold as Warn­er mount­ed a pre­lim­i­nary le­gal chal­lenge over it.

Af­ter the law­suit was dis­missed by the Court of Ap­peal and the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil in No­vem­ber 2022, Warn­er raised an­oth­er le­gal chal­lenge over al­leged in­con­sis­ten­cies in the charges against him. The le­gal chal­lenge re­lates to the ex­tra­di­tion agree­ment be­tween the US and T&T and the prin­ci­ple of spe­cial­i­ty, un­der which an ex­tra­di­tion per­son could on­ly be pros­e­cut­ed for of­fences made un­der the ini­tial ex­tra­di­tion re­quest and no oth­er crimes.

For­mer chief mag­is­trate and cur­rent High Court Judge Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle stayed the pro­ceed­ings to al­low him to pro­ceed with the fresh le­gal chal­lenge. When the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings came up for hear­ing in March, act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles ad­journed the case to De­cem­ber to al­low that le­gal chal­lenge to pro­ceed.

In Ju­ly last year, Warn­er made the re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the le­gal fees. Sev­er­al months lat­er, his re­quest was de­nied by the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary on the ba­sis that there were no “suf­fi­cient­ly strong pub­lic in­ter­ests” to war­rant it and pre­serve at­tor­ney/client priv­i­lege.

When Warn­er filed the case, some of the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion was dis­closed. He still con­tin­ued the case as he point­ed out the dis­crep­an­cies. The tri­al of the case be­fore Jus­tice Reid is ex­pect­ed to take place in Ju­ly next year.