As Caribbean football countries accused of taking bribes
Only hours before Joseph S. Blatter was re-elected for a fourth term as FIFA’s president, he had claimed that FIFA was not in crisis.
Blatter stood unopposed in Wednesday’s vote after he was cleared of any wrongdoing by FIFA’s ethics committee while his challenger, Mohamed Bin Hammam of Qatar, was suspended, along with Trinidad & Tobago’s Government minister Jack Warner pending a full investigation into bribery allegations.
Montserrat’s Football Association (MFA) president Vincent Cassell who himself survived two stalemated general elections to the office, was one of the voting members in Zurich this week.
Suspended Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam was denied entry to the FIFA congress after being unable to file his appeal.
FIFA took action against the 62-year-old amid allegations of corruption, including claims he “bought” the 2022 World Cup for Qatar, which he denies.
“I am sad and disappointed over what has happened,” he said in a statement.
“I will never accept how my name and my reputation have been damaged. I will fight for my rights.”
Bin Hammam was set to stand against current chief Sepp Blatter for the position of FIFA president before pulling out of the race hours before he was provisionally banned from all football-related activities on bribery charges.
T&T Government Minister Jack Warner president of the North American and Caribbean federation, (CONCACAF) says he will expose Blatter, and promises to reveal all as he vehemently denies any wrong doing that resulted in his suspension.
He is accused and suspended for allegedly colluding with Bin Hammam to offer bribes worth up to $1 million (£600,000) to 25 Caribbean football associations in exchange for their votes. As disclosed by Telegraph Sport, Warner and Bin Hammam are said to have arranged for members of the Caribbean Football Union to be offered envelopes containing $40,000 (£24,000) in $100 bills as “gifts”.
Despite the mounting evidence submitted to FIFA’s ethics committee, including photographs of $100 bills in brown envelopes, Warner and Bin Hammam deny any involvement in the scandal which allegedly involved payments of up to $40,000 to delegates at a meeting in Trinidad to secure votes for Bin Hammam, while he was challenging Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency.
Part of Warner’s defence is that 13 Caribbean nations have come forward to say no meeting ever took place. But one insider said: ‘For 13 CFU associations to claim nothing happened is demonstrably false. There are witnesses who saw people — among those very same people who sent in those letters — walk into the room and out of it.’
Five associations have told investigators that they rejected the offers of individual payments of $40,000 in $100 bills, details of which were revealed at the weekend by Telegraph Sport.
A further 13 of the associations have written statements supporting Warner’s denial that any such offers were made, and at a meeting of the Concacaf confederation, which includes Caribbean associations, on Monday they were all warned to hand back any money.
The warning came from Chuck Blazer, the general secretary of Concacaf and the man who first revealed the bribery allegations. According to Canadian FA president Dominique Maestracci, Blazer encouraged the associations to hand back the money or face action.
MinisterWarner is no stranger to being named FIFA scandals, angry after being provisionally suspended by an ethics committee hearing, said he had been the victim of a kangaroo court.
Speaking of Sepp Blatter, Fifa president and the man he has backed for almost 30 years he said: “Blatter has to be stopped, and if he believes that he has got (Chuck) Blazer as his ally … Blazer is an employee.”
Mr Blazer, who has been Mr Warner’s secretary general at CONCACAF for 21 years, sparked the ethics hearing with a report on a Caribbean Football Union meeting earlier this month in which he said there had been possible violations of the FIFA code of ethics including “bribery allegations”.
As the allegations, suspensions and elections were taking place, FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke denied that an email in which he claimed Qatar had “bought” the World Cup was intended to suggest that they had behaved improperly or paid for votes.
Valcke himself has come under the gun and questions have been raised as to why he did nothing or so little if he suspected there may have been some misdoings involved in the world cup bids for 2018 and 2022.
