Derek Achong

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball (Con­ca­caf) has scored a first-round vic­to­ry in its le­gal bat­tle against its for­mer pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er over the own­er­ship of the Dr Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion, on Mon­day af­ter­noon, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion from two com­pa­nies owned by Warn­er’s fam­i­ly and his wife Mau­reen to re­move them from the US$37.8 mil­lion law­suit which was brought against them, Warn­er, Warn­er’s ac­coun­tant Ken­ny Ram­per­sad and Ram­per­sad’s ac­count­ing firm.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, Warn­er’s wife and the com­pa­nies, Ren­raw In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed and CCAM and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed were claim­ing that the case, filed in 2016, was statute barred as it con­cerned con­duct which took place be­tween 1995 and 2011.

They al­so sub­mit­ted that while Con­ca­caf could claim that Warn­er had a fidu­cia­ry du­ty to it based on his long stint at the helm of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, they had no con­nec­tion.

Is­sues with the own­er­ship of the lu­cra­tive prop­er­ty, which fea­tures a swim­ming com­plex, restau­rants, a 44-room ho­tel, con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties, a gym and the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, arose short­ly af­ter Warn­er’s suc­ces­sor at Con­ca­caf, Jef­fery Webb in­sti­tut­ed an in­tegri­ty in­ves­ti­ga­tion against him and fel­low for­mer pres­i­dent Chuck Blaz­er.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion came three years be­fore Warn­er and Blaz­er and oth­er Fi­fa of­fi­cials were im­pli­cat­ed in a Unit­ed States (US) De­part­ment of Jus­tice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion in the op­er­a­tions of world foot­ball’s gov­ern­ing body.

Warn­er is still cur­rent­ly fight­ing his pro­posed ex­tra­di­tion to the US to face the charges with the Privy Coun­cil dis­miss­ing a pre­lim­i­nary chal­lenge ear­li­er this year.

In the claim, Con­ca­caf is con­tend­ing that Warn­er, his wife and the com­pa­nies were in­volved in a con­spir­a­cy to mis­ap­pro­pri­ate Con­ca­caf funds which were al­lo­cat­ed to con­struct the fa­cil­i­ty by mis­rep­re­sent­ing that it (the fa­cil­i­ty) was ac­tu­al­ly owned by Con­ca­caf.

Con­ca­caf al­so list­ed Ram­per­sad and his com­pa­ny as par­ties to the claim as it con­tend­ed that he had a con­flict of in­ter­est by serv­ing as the ac­coun­tant for both Con­ca­caf and the com­pa­nies.

In de­fence of the claim, Warn­er, who served as Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent be­tween 1990 and 2011, has claimed that he could not re­call facts sur­round­ing the deal due to Con­ca­caf’s de­lay in bring­ing the claim.

He al­so de­nied that he and his wife had a con­trol­ling in­ter­est in the com­pa­nies and that he mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed funds.

Warn­er’s wife has al­so con­tend­ed that she was nev­er in­volved in the fi­nanc­ing of the project.

Ram­per­sad al­so de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he con­tend­ed that he pro­vid­ed sec­re­tar­i­al ser­vices to the com­pa­nies and claimed that he did not owe Con­ca­caf any fidu­cia­ry du­ty as he mere­ly served as an au­di­tor.

In 2019, US Dis­trict Court Judge William Kuntz grant­ed Con­ca­caf a de­fault judge­ment in a sep­a­rate US$79 mil­lion case against Warn­er, in which it al­leged that Warn­er em­bez­zled tens of mil­lions of dol­lars from it.

The out­come of that case was based on Warn­er’s fail­ure to de­fend it.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed’s de­ci­sion on the pre­lim­i­nary is­sue means that the sub­stan­tive case can now go on tri­al be­fore him.

A case man­age­ment con­fer­ence in the case is sched­uled to be held on Feb­ru­ary 2.

Warn­er and the com­pa­nies were rep­re­sent­ed by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Sasha Bridge­mo­hans­ingh and Anil Maraj, while Rishi Dass and Maria Nar­i­nesingh rep­re­sent­ed Warn­er’s wife.

Con­ca­caf was rep­re­sent­ed by Christo­pher Hamel-Smith, Jonathan Walk­er and Cherie Gopie.