Mark Bas­sant (T&T GUARDIAN) & Anuš­ka Delić (OC­CRP/Oštro)

Dis­graced for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er per­son­al­ly fund­ed an eth­ni­cal­ly di­vi­sive dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign in Trinidad and To­ba­go de­signed by an elec­tion en­gi­neer­ing firm to dis­cour­age black Trinida­di­ans from vot­ing.

Warn­er is cur­rent­ly fight­ing ex­tra­di­tion to the US on charges of cor­rup­tion, in­clud­ing that he ac­cept­ed $5 mil­lion in bribes to vote for Rus­sia to be award­ed the 2018 World Cup.

How­ev­er, his in­volve­ment with the “Do So!” cam­paign led by SCL, the par­ent com­pa­ny of Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca, has nev­er be­fore been re­vealed and was on­ly un­cov­ered fol­low­ing a near­ly four-month in­ves­ti­ga­tion by OC­CRP part­nered with the T&T Guardian.

The cam­paign, which may have swayed T&T’s 2010 elec­tion in favour of his Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress par­ty, used graf­fi­ti, bill­boards and mu­sic videos to sug­gest to black Trinida­di­an youth that they shouldn’t vote.

Warn­er has con­sis­tent­ly de­nied to lo­cal me­dia his al­leged in­volve­ment in the “Do So!” cam­paign in the run-up to the 2010 elec­tion.

At the time of “Do So!”, which ran dur­ing the 2010 T&T pri­maries, Warn­er’s ca­reer in in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball was sput­ter­ing to an end amid ac­cu­sa­tions that he had trad­ed favours for mon­ey. But he was lay­ing the ground­work for a sec­ond act as a Trinida­di­an politi­cian, hav­ing been elect­ed to rep­re­sent the UNC in par­lia­ment in 2007.

The 2010 vote was a crit­i­cal junc­ture in Trinida­di­an pol­i­tics, with the in­cum­bent prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning look­ing vul­ner­a­ble af­ter three terms in pow­er. Giv­en the stakes, one ex­pert called the role played by a firm like SCL “re­al­ly dis­turb­ing.”

Em­ma Bri­ant, a fel­low at Bard Col­lege who stud­ies in­for­ma­tion war­fare and pro­pa­gan­da, said the rev­e­la­tions un­der­scored the need for bet­ter over­sight of in­flu­ence firms.

“It’s very con­tex­tu­al what can do dam­age in a par­tic­u­lar so­ci­ety,” she said.

“In Trinidad … there is this racial di­vide in pol­i­tics, and you can ei­ther play to that or try to find some­thing that doesn’t.”

Dr Ralph Pre­m­das, who wrote an es­say en­ti­tled “Eth­no-na­tion­al­ism and Eth­nic dy­nam­ics in Trinidad and To­ba­go: To­wards de­sign­ing an in­clu­sivist form of Gov­er­nance,” and is now at­tached to UWI’s De­part­ment of Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ence, said in a brief email ex­change with the Trinidad Guardian that in his es­say, he not­ed that, “in Trinidad, eth­nic ri­val­ry and ten­sion per­vade all elec­tions. Thus di­vi­sive­ness is in­evitable.”

Plans Hatched

SCL was formed in the 1990s by British busi­ness­man Nigel Oakes, and in­vest­ed $20 mil­lion in­to de­vel­op­ing what Oakes called an “ad­vanced per­sua­sion method­ol­o­gy.”

The com­pa­ny lat­er re­brand­ed and launched a po­lit­i­cal sec­tion fo­cus­ing on “elec­tion man­age­ment” and oth­er cam­paigns, most­ly in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. On its web­site — tak­en of­fline af­ter the com­pa­ny went in­to ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2019 — it boast­ed of in­flu­enc­ing po­lit­i­cal out­comes from In­done­sia to South Africa.

The firm al­so brought on Alexan­der Nix, who took over its elec­tion­eer­ing work and even­tu­al­ly start­ed a new ven­ture, Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca. This was the in­fa­mous elec­tion en­gi­neer­ing agency that as­sist­ed Don­ald Trump’s rise to the US pres­i­den­cy in 2016.

Long be­fore Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca would en­ter Trump’s or­bit, Nix was busy work­ing in the Caribbean un­der the SCL ban­ner.

Sven Hugh­es, the for­mer head of elec­tions for SCL, said the firm had worked in T&T be­fore un­der the lead­er­ship of Nigel Oakes, who al­ready had es­tab­lished con­tacts with an op­po­si­tion par­ty. At the time, a lot of con­trac­tors worked on cam­paigns in the re­gion, he re­called: “It was just ‘which elec­tion is next?’ and you get passed around.”

SCL spot­ted an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put an op­po­si­tion par­ty in pow­er in, which they saw as more ad­van­ta­geous. A fresh breath in gov­ern­ment meant fresh deals, he not­ed.

Hugh­es said that one night in April 2010, he and Nix wait­ed in a run-down ho­tel room in Port-of-Spain un­til they re­ceived a 3 am phone call from Warn­er’s lawyer, Om Lal­la, telling them they could head over for a se­cret meet­ing. The four con­vened in Warn­er’s FI­FA-re­galia-clad of­fice and made a plan.

“Warn­er gave us a tour of his var­i­ous FI­FA medals, pho­tos, posters, and then … we got down to busi­ness,” Hugh­es re­called in an in­ter­view with OC­CRP/Oštro.

They agreed that SCL would run what it called a “groundswell” gueril­la mar­ket­ing cam­paign ahead of the 2010 elec­tions, to show the UNC what SCL could do and that Warn­er would pay for it. Lat­er, Warn­er would use his in­flu­ence to get par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to meet with the elec­tion­eer­ing firm, Hugh­es said.

The hope was that SCL would be giv­en a much larg­er con­tract of $4 mil­lion or $5 mil­lion to de­vise a cam­paign for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

An email ob­tained by OC­CRP shows that in late April 2010, Lal­la sent Nix and Hugh­es a list of mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies on that SCL should fo­cus its cam­paign.

The fol­low­ing month, Lal­la told Hugh­es he could write to Warn­er’s sec­re­tary to get the mon­ey for the cam­paign. “She has pay­ment of the sum of $62K USD for SCL,” Lal­la wrote in an an­oth­er leaked email shared with OC­CRP and T&T Guardian. “She will al­so pro­vide you with the de­tails of pay­ment made in the sum of $15k USD for the li­cense fee of the Do So (cam­paign).”

Cit­ing at­tor­ney-client priv­i­lege, Lal­la told the T&T Guardian, OC­CRP’s re­port­ing part­ner, that he could not an­swer ques­tions about the cam­paign. Warn­er did not re­spond to writ­ten re­quests for com­ment fol­low­ing nu­mer­ous at­tempts over the last two months. Fi­nal­ly reached by tele­phone, he said he was “not in­ter­est­ed” in dis­cussing it.

‘Psy­cho­log­i­cal Ju­do’

Hugh­es had al­ready planned much of the cam­paign. Its name was in­spired by Per­cy Vil­lafana who made head­lines when he crossed his arms in front of him to refuse the in­cum­bent prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning, en­try to his prop­er­ty for an elec­tion­eer­ing vis­it.

“Bin­go, I had my be­hav­iour change cam­paign, or a ‘psy­cho­log­i­cal ju­do’ cam­paign, to be spe­cif­ic,” Hugh­es wrote in the doc­u­ment he said he sub­mit­ted to the FBI.

He re­called draw­ing up the cam­paign art­work in his ho­tel room: “A pair of black arms, crossed, with the line ‘DO SO!’ un­der­neath, print­ed on the UNC Coali­tion yel­low.” The im­pli­ca­tion was that youth should al­so cross their arms and ab­stain from pol­i­tics.

“Do So’s” mes­sage of apo­lit­i­cal de­fi­ance took off among Trinida­di­an youth, but it al­so be­came in­fa­mous af­ter a 2019 Net­flix doc­u­men­tary about Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca high­light­ed it as a key ex­am­ple of the firm’s covert in­flu­ence op­er­a­tions.

Rough­ly half the pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go is of African de­scent, while the oth­er half is East In­di­an. The Net­flix doc­u­men­tary in­clud­ed a se­cret voice record­ing of Nix brag­ging that the goal of the cam­paign was to in­crease vot­er ap­a­thy and dis­cour­age young Afro-Trinida­di­ans from vot­ing since SCL’s client was more pop­u­lar among East In­di­ans.

Nix ex­plained the cam­paign’s mes­sage like this: “Don’t vote. … It’s a sign of re­sis­tance against — not the gov­ern­ment, against pol­i­tics. And vot­ing…

“We knew that when it came to vot­ing, all the Afro-Trinida­di­an kids wouldn’t vote, be­cause they ‘Do So’. But all the In­di­an kids would do what their par­ents told them to do, which is go out and vote.”

Hugh­es de­nied this to OC­CRP, in­sist­ing that the cam­paign wasn’t in­tend­ed to tar­get vot­ers by race and that he had de­vised it with­out any in­volve­ment from Nix.

“It was ab­solute­ly not some sort of di­vi­sion­al cam­paign,” he said. “It was on­ly about mak­ing the vot­ers feel em­pow­ered to stand up to Man­ning’s in­creas­ing­ly au­to­crat­ic gov­ern­ment.”

How­ev­er, a polling re­port cre­at­ed by SCL for the UNC, and ob­tained by OC­CRP, notes that the cam­paign was de­signed to fo­cus specif­i­cal­ly on Afro-Trinida­di­an vot­ers.

Bri­ant, the dis­in­for­ma­tion ex­pert, said it was “a lit­tle bit naive to think they weren’t lever­ag­ing the dif­fer­ent eth­nic groups against each oth­er.”

“They were lever­ag­ing some things that es­sen­tial­ly were de­signed to get at the youth, that would re­in­force these kinds of di­vi­sive eth­nic process­es of de­ci­sion-mak­ing in the elec­tions, and they were ba­si­cal­ly try­ing to work with peo­ple who re­al­ly didn’t care about the youth of the coun­try … and do­ing it in such a way that was clear­ly try­ing to stoke di­vi­sions,” she added.

De­spite the seem­ing suc­cess of “Do So!,” SCL nev­er end­ed up land­ing the big as­sign­ment it was an­gling for.

“Warn­er got us a meet­ing with Kam­la… but Bertie blew it,” Hugh­es re­called. “Kam­la clear­ly didn’t like his long pre­sen­ta­tion style with all those slides and told him to hur­ry up. He took great of­fence at this and car­ried on with his slides.” Ul­ti­mate­ly, he said, Nix got in­to a shout­ing match with the par­ty boss and had to be es­cort­ed from the room.

But the UNC did win the 2010 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, be­com­ing a lead­ing part­ner in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion.

At­tempts made by the T&T Guardian and OOCRP to ques­tion Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar about the meet­ing she had with Alexan­der Nix, why they fell out, and whether she was aware of Warn­er’s fund­ing of the “Do So” cam­paign were fu­tile. She did not re­spond to ques­tions sent via email, text mes­sage, or What­sApp, and sev­er­al calls to her cell phone went unan­swered over the last week. At­tempts to con­tact her were al­so made through sev­er­al UNC par­ty mem­bers but to no avail.

Warn­er was ap­point­ed Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter and, lat­er, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

CA Po­lit­i­cal, the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca arm fo­cused on po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing, boast­ed on its web­site of how it had in­flu­enced the 2010 elec­tions and got Per­sad-Bisses­sar elect­ed as prime min­is­ter.

Nonethe­less, ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion even­tu­al­ly caught up with Warn­er, and FI­FA sus­pend­ed him in 2011 for al­leged­ly or­gan­is­ing the pay­ment of cash bribes to mem­bers of a Caribbean foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion. Soon af­ter that, he was forced to re­sign from both FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF.

In ad­di­tion to the bribery al­le­ga­tions, Warn­er has been ac­cused of fail­ing to pay foot­ball play­ers their bonus mon­ey; steal­ing funds for Hait­ian earth­quake vic­tims; al­low­ing his son to sell black-mar­ket World Cup tick­ets through a fam­i­ly trav­el agency; and build­ing a $26-mil­lion CON­CA­CAF fa­cil­i­ty on land he owned, es­sen­tial­ly grant­i­ng him own­er­ship over it.

In 2015, he was caught in one of the biggest bribery scan­dals in foot­ball his­to­ry af­ter the US gov­ern­ment al­leged he had tak­en in mil­lions of dol­lars worth of bribes from South African of­fi­cials to fix the vot­ing for the lo­ca­tion of the 2010 World Cup.

Lat­er that year, he was banned from foot­ball for life.

In 2018, Nix be­came the face of Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca’s down­fall when the UK’s Chan­nel 4 News re­vealed se­cret record­ings of him sell­ing the com­pa­ny’s tech­niques, in­clud­ing en­trap­ment and bribery, to prospec­tive clients who were ac­tu­al­ly un­der­cov­er re­porters.

In 2018, Stu­art Young who was then a min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice called on the UNC to state what ser­vices the com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed and who paid for these ser­vices.

He said then, “It ap­pears that the UNC used these en­ti­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go whilst in gov­ern­ment and they should now tell the pub­lic what they used Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca, SCL or any of their as­so­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies for what work did they do, what tac­tics did they em­ploy for the UNC and very im­por­tant­ly who paid for their ser­vices.”