FIFA faces calls for Warner probes

Jack Warner
12 April 2012

FIFA face calls to re-open the investigation into former vice-president Jack Warner after a secret ethics committee report labelled him "an accessory to corruption".

FIFA announced on Monday that Warner had resigned as FIFA vice-president and quit all football activities, and the world governing body said as a result they had dropped all investigations into him and that "the presumption of innocence is maintained".

But a report of the ethics committee headed by Namibian judge Petrus Damaseb which provisionally suspended Warner and Bin Hammam on May 29 says there was "overwhelming" evidence that bribes had been paid to officials by FIFA member Mohamed Bin Hammam during his campaign for the presidency, and that Warner had facilitated this.

Damian Collins, the Tory MP who is campaigning for a reform of FIFA, told Press Association Sport: "This makes FIFA's claim that Jack Warner can be presumed innocent absolutely incredible. I believe Jack Warner should be made to answer these charges - it's not enough just for him to resign.

"This shows it was a big error of judgement by Sepp Blatter to call off the inquiry and cover this up. FIFA should also confirm that Mohamed Bin Hammam should not similarly be allowed to resign in return for having the investigation dropped."

The 17-page ethics committee document setting out their decision was faxed to Warner last week, on June 14, and three days later he informed FIFA he was resigning.

A copy of that report has now been obtained by the Press Association. It concludes that there was "compelling" evidence that Bin Hammam and Warner arranged a special meeting of the 25 members of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) on May 10 and 11 in Trinidad and that, with their knowledge, cash gifts were handed over.

Statements from witnesses, described as "credible and correspondent" in the report, said they were handed brown envelopes each containing 40,000 US dollars. One of the witnesses, Fred Lunn from the Bahamas, photographed the cash before returning it.

Four witnesses stated that Warner told the CFU delegates on May 11 that the "money for the ''gifts'' allegedly distributed the day before had been apparently provided by Mr Bin Hammam", the document states.

Warner's evidence to the May 29 hearing is described as "mere self-serving declarations" and that he "failed to provide the FIFA ethics committee with a plausible explanation".

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