Clydeen Mc­Don­ald

Warn­er's his­to­ry and rise to pow­er in FI­FA

FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent and CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent Austin Jack Warn­er has been a mem­ber of the FI­FA Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee since 1983, and CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent since 1990. Es­ti­mates sug­gest that he has amassed a for­tune of al­most US$50 mil­lion. When Warn­er be­came the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Trinidad Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion in 1973, he im­me­di­ate­ly en­trenched his pow­er by set­ting up nu­mer­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions filled with his peo­ple, who could ex­er­cise vot­ing rights should he come un­der threat from a com­peti­tor.

He rapid­ly spot­ted a chance for fur­ther pro­mo­tion when he ran for the pres­i­den­cy of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union, which came with the added prize of a seat on the FI­FA Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. Warn­er helped formed the Trinidad and To­ba­go's Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball League (PFL) in 1999, then the first pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball league in the Caribbean, which has since been su­per­seded by the T&T Pro League. Warn­er pur­chased the Scar­let Ibis Ho­tel in St Au­gus­tine for TT$6 mil­lion in 1998, which he ren­o­vat­ed and re­named the Emer­ald Apart­ments and Plaza.

Run by his son Daryl, that en­ti­ty spon­sored lo­cal foot­ball com­pe­ti­tions, in­clud­ing the 2010 East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Emer­ald Apart­ments and Plaza Cup. Warn­er al­so owns Kan­tac Plaza in Arou­ca, which was used as the base for T&T's suc­cess­ful 2006 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign. He has oth­er re­al es­tate hold­ings, in­clud­ing the of­fices used by Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF) and CON­CA­CAF. CON­CA­CAF pays Warn­er "near­ly a third of a mil­lion dol­lars a year" rent. Warn­er al­so claims busi­ness in­ter­ests in Cos­ta Ri­ca and the Unit­ed States. Warn­er states that his in­vest­ments were fund­ed from "the salary and al­lowances I re­ceived from FI­FA."

He was re-elect­ed for a new term as FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent in 2011. Dur­ing his tenure, Warn­er has been im­pli­cat­ed in nu­mer­ous cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions that reach back as far as the 1980s. On May 10, 2011, cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions were lev­elled against Warn­er by for­mer Eng­lish Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion chair­man, Lord David Tries­man. Tries­man al­leged that Warn­er was one of four FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers who asked for mon­ey in re­turn for his vote sup­port­ing Eng­land's 2018 World Cup bid. FI­FA se­nior ex­ec­u­tives Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam and Warn­er have been sus­pend­ed pend­ing a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to bribery al­le­ga­tions that they of­fered US$1 mil­lion in bribes to del­e­gates at a Caribbean soc­cer as­so­ci­a­tion meet­ing on May 10-11 in Trinidad.

The pay­ments were al­leged­ly made to se­cure votes for bin Ham­mam, in his cam­paign to un­seat Blat­ter. The ev­i­dence was com­piled by US ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Chuck Blaz­er. Fol­low­ing is the time line chro­nol­o­gis­ing Warn­er's as­cen­dan­cy in FI­FA and the con­tro­ver­sies that have dogged him:

1963: Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

1971�73: Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Cen­tral St George Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion.

1973: Sec­re­tary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (TTFF).

1983: CON­CA­CAF vice-pres­i­dent and al­so joined the FI­FA Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.

1990: Elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union, re­sign­ing his post in the same year at TTFF, but was im­me­di­ate­ly ap­point­ed a spe­cial ad­vis­er, a po­si­tion that he still holds. He was al­so elect­ed CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent.

1996: launched of Joe Pub­lic Foot­ball Club.

1997: Ap­point­ed FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent.

2010: Stat­ed his in­ten­tion to stand for re-elec­tion as FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent in 2011.

2011: Re-elect­ed for a new term as FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent.

CON­TRO­VER­SIES

1989: Dur­ing T&T's ill-fat­ed World Cup 1990 qual­i­fy­ing en­counter with the US at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Warn­er an­nounced that ex­tra tick­ets would be print­ed for the game and al­co­hol re­stric­tions with­in the ground would be lift­ed. The sta­di­um's 28,500 ca­pac­i­ty seat­ing was over­sold and 45,000 tick­ets were print­ed.

1996: Warn­er was in­volved in sub­sti­tut­ing Vin­cy Jalal, the girl­friend of the head of the Ja­maican Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (JFF), Ho­race Bur­rell in­to the place of the ab­sent Hait­ian del­e­gate, Dr Jean-Marie Kyss, in the 1996 FI­FA Con­gress.

1998: Haiti's vote was al­so re­placed at the 1998 FI­FA Con­gress, this time by Trinida­di­an Neville Fer­gu­son.

2001: The Un­der-17 World Cup was award­ed to T&T. Con­tracts to build five new sta­di­ums went to com­pa­nies linked to as­so­ciates of Warn­er. When tech­ni­cal staff from the broad­cast­ing com­pa­nies vis­it­ed the new venues, they dis­cov­ered that roof beams and ca­bles would ob­struct the cam­eras' an­gles of the pitch. When they tried to ques­tion Warn­er and FI­FA over this, they were side­lined.

�2 All the food and bev­er­age con­tracts for the new sta­di­ums were award­ed to a lo­cal restau­rant busi­ness, owned by Warn­er's son, Daryan.

�2 The flights and ac­com­mo­da­tion arrange­ment for the 15 teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in the tour­na­ment were done through Sim­paul's Trav­el ser­vice, owned by the Warn­er fam­i­ly.

�2 FI­FA was ex­per­i­ment­ing with in­tro­duc­ing kiosks in ho­tel lob­bies to en­able fans to ac­cess in­stant re­ports and break­ing news. The US$2 mil­lion con­tract was award­ed to a com­pa­ny called Sem­tor, whose project man­ag­er turned out to be Daryan Warn­er, who picked up a cheque for US$60,000 as 'man­age­ment li­ai­son be­tween all Web ini­tia­tive con­sul­tants.'

2002: Var­i­ous glob­al me­dia pub­li­ca­tions al­leged that Warn­er had made a prof­it of $350,000 sell­ing 2002 FI­FA World Cup tick­ets.

2004: When meet­ing the Queen at Buck­ing­ham Palace, he com­plained to her that British com­pa­nies were fail­ing to spend their spon­sor­ship mon­ey on foot­ball in T&T. (Jen­nings,

p.320)

2005: T&T qual­i­fied for the World Cup for the first time af­ter Den­nis Lawrence's head­er knocked out Bahrain to send T&T to Ger­many. The on­ly way that Trinida­di­ans could get tick­ets for the team's first-round match­es was through Sim­paul Trav­el Ser­vices, the com­pa­ny owned by Warn­er. Tick­ets for the three group stage games and shared ac­com­mo­da­tion would cost fans �2,730.53. Sim­paul Trav­el was mak­ing a prof­it of over �1,700 on each pack­age sold. The In­de­pen­dent news­pa­per in Eng­land sug­gest­ed that Warn­er made a prof­it of over �10 mil­lion on T&T's tick­et al­lo­ca­tion. A pri­vate­ly ap­point­ed com­mit­tee was re­spon­si­ble for han­dling the spon­sor­ship and mer­chan­dis­ing for the team.

Af­ter a re­quest from a Lon­don-based busi­ness, they re­quest­ed a fee of US$80,000, plus five per cent of gross sales of the pro­posed mer­chan­dise. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pri­vate com­mit­tee turned out to be Daryl Warn­er, one of Warn­er's sons. FI­FA reg­u­la­tions stat­ed that pack­ag­ing tick­ets with oth­er ser­vices was not per­mit­ted, but Warn­er's own com­pa­ny was flout­ing FI­FA's own rules, while he was ac­cused of sell­ing FI­FA tick­ets for his own per­son­al prof­it. In con­se­quence of be­ing found guilty of break­ing FI­FA's Ar­ti­cle 5, min­utes of FI­FA's ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee in­di­cate that a fine of al­most US$1 mil­lion, equal to the ex­pect­ed prof­i­teer­ing, was im­posed on the fam­i­ly. Warn­er al­so agreed to se­vere all fam­i­ly links with Sim­paul im­me­di­ate­ly.

How­ev­er, Warn­er's son Daryan re­mained a di­rec­tor of Sim­paul through­out World Cup 2006, while his per­son­al as­sis­tant re­mained the com­pa­ny sec­re­tary of Sim­paul. De­spite nu­mer­ous re­minders from FI­FA, on­ly $250,000 has been paid. The British news­pa­per The Lon­don Dai­ly Mail re­port­ed that Warn­er's son, Daryan was fined US$1 mil­lion in 2007, af­ter in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist An­drew Jen­nings, the pre­sen­ter of FI­FA's Dirty Se­crets re­vealed the Ernst & Young re­port which ex­posed that Warn­er had sold tick­ets through the trav­el agent Sim­paul.