Geisha Kow­lessar

Af­ter end­ing his near 30-year as­so­ci­a­tion with foot­ball's gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA, and be­fore the con­clu­sion of an in­quiry in­to bribery al­le­ga­tions against him, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jack Warn­er has de­clared: "I've been hung out to dry." Warn­er who was at the cen­tre of a FI­FA bribery scan­dal re­signed from all his po­si­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball yes­ter­day, pledg­ing to put the in­ter­ests of his coun­try first.FI­FA, which con­firmed Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion in a state­ment, said his de­ci­sion meant a probe in­to his con­duct, amid bribery al­le­ga­tions linked to FI­FA's pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, was over.Warn­er, 68, in­formed the Zurich-based or­gan­i­sa­tion in a let­ter about his de­ci­sion, ac­cus­ing FI­FA of hypocrisy and want­i­ng to "sani­tise it­self."

He was al­so pres­i­dent of the Con­ca­caf, a fed­er­a­tion of coun­tries from the Caribbean and North and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, un­til he was re­port­ed to FI­FA by Con­ca­caf's gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Chuck Blaz­er, and be­came the fo­cus of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion in world foot­ball's gov­ern­ing body.Warn­er in an in­ter­view with Bloomberg said: "This is giv­ing the im­pres­sion that FI­FA is sani­tis­ing it­self. I've been hung out to dry con­tin­u­al­ly and I'm not pre­pared to take that."Brand­ing the al­le­ga­tions hyp­o­crit­i­cal Warn­er added: "It's not un­usu­al for such things to hap­pen and gifts have been around through­out the his­to­ry of FI­FA. What's hap­pen­ing now for me is hypocrisy."

Warn­er, chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), said he al­so had lost his en­thu­si­asm to con­tin­ue, claim­ing the gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who he had em­ployed and worked with for 21 years with the as­sis­tance of el­e­ments of FI­FA, had sought to un­der­mine him in ways that were "unimag­in­able."Warn­er was sus­pend­ed pend­ing a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions he and an­oth­er FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber and pres­i­dent of the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion, Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam, of­fered bribes at a meet­ing of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) in Trinidad.

It was al­leged that pay­ments of up to US$40,000 were made to se­cure votes for Bin Ham­mam in his cam­paign to chal­lenge Sepp Blat­ter for the pres­i­den­cy.Blat­ter was re-elect­ed for a fourth con­sec­u­tive term af­ter go­ing to the polls un­op­posed.In a state­ment, is­sued and signed by Warn­er yes­ter­day. he in­sist­ed he would have been ex­on­er­at­ed by the ethics com­mit­tee, say­ing he did no wrong but mere­ly "fa­cil­i­tat­ed a meet­ing" with Bin Ham­mam.He said: "This de­ci­sion is by my own vo­li­tion and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion; al­beit it comes dur­ing the se­quel to the con­tentious Mo­hammed bin Ham­mam meet­ing in Port-of- Spain in May with CFU del­e­gates.

"I am con­vinced and I am ad­vised by coun­sel that since my ac­tions did not ex­tend be­yond fa­cil­i­tat­ing the meet­ing that gave Mr Bin Ham­mam an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue his abort­ed bid for the FI­FA pres­i­den­cy, I will be ful­ly ex­on­er­at­ed by any ob­jec­tive ar­biter." He al­so swore to help FI­FA's wider cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which in­clud­ed Bin Ham­mam."I reaf­firm my of­fer of co-op­er­a­tion with the FI­FA ethics com­mit­tee in the res­o­lu­tion of the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties per­tain­ing to the re­cent vis­it of Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam to Port-of-Spain to meet with CFU del­e­gates," Warn­er said.

He said his de­ci­sion to quit al­so was sparked by the need to spare FI­FA, Con­ca­caf and, in par­tic­u­lar CFU, and its mem­ber­ship fur­ther bit­ter­ness and di­vi­sion.Say­ing he was grat­i­fied that FI­FA had ac­knowl­edged his ser­vice to in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al foot­ball over sev­er­al decades, Warn­er added:"It is al­so a spe­cial source of sat­is­fac­tion to me that dur­ing my tenure, ca­pac­i­ties and fa­cil­i­ties in the Caribbean were up­grad­ed to lev­els that en­abled the re­gion to host sev­er­al FI­FA World Cup fi­nals."Al­though his ties with FI­FA may be over, Warn­er said his de­ci­sion al­so sig­nalled re­newed ser­vice and com­mit­ment to the peo­ple of T&T."With my with­draw­al from ser­vice in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball, I shall hence­forth be con­cen­trat­ing ex­clu­sive­ly on my life­long com­mit­ment to the ser­vice of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, cur­rent­ly as chair­man of the ma­jor par­ty in our gov­ern­ing coali­tion and as a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter in the Gov­ern­ment of our Re­pub­lic," Warn­er said.

He said he would strive to en­cour­age the youth of the Caribbean and the world to deep­en their in­volve­ment in foot­ball, which has lift­ed many young peo­ple out of hope­less­ness and fos­tered to per­son­al achieve­ment while bring­ing glo­ry to their re­spec­tive coun­tries.Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence af­ter ar­riv­ing from Zurich, Switzer­land, where he at­tend­ed a FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee hear­ing Warn­er said he was dis­ap­point­ed in some Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) mem­bers who urged him to step down."I un­der­stand my crit­ics. I would have pre­ferred that their crit­i­cism was not mo­ti­vat­ed by blood lust or mal­ice. They are smelling blood and I say I un­der­stand this but I do not ac­cept this," he said.He al­so made di­rect ref­er­ence to the call by Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, who is among the COP can­di­dates vy­ing for lead­er­ship of the par­ty.

"As a lawyer he should know bet­ter and he and I were good friends un­til now," Warn­er said. "How can you be a po­lit­i­cal leader? This for me is non­sense... I'm to­tal­ly dis­ap­point­ed in Prakash Ra­mad­har."In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion FI­FA, in a state­ment, said it had re­gret­ted the turn of events that had led to Warn­er's de­ci­sion."Mr Warn­er is leav­ing FI­FA by his own vo­li­tion af­ter near­ly 30 years of ser­vice, hav­ing cho­sen to fo­cus on his im­por­tant work on be­half of the peo­ple and Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go," it said.The in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball body al­so thanked Warn­er for his con­tri­bu­tion to in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball and to Caribbean foot­ball in par­tic­u­lar and Con­ca­caf.