[Mr. Warner was once a close ally of Chuck Blazer, the
former general secretary of Concacaf, the governing body that oversees soccer
in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Mr. Blazer has admitted
taking bribes from bidders seeking to host the 1998 and 2010 World Cups and is
now cooperating with the American authorities. On Wednesday, a judge in New
York ordered the release of a redacted version of his
plea hearing in 2013.]
By Dan Bilefsky
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Jack Warner, a former
FIFA executive, at a meeting of his
Independent Liberal Party in Trinidad and Tobago on
Wednesday. Credit Andrea De Silva/Reuters
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LONDON — Jack Warner, the former FIFA
vice president who was among 14 people indicted by
a United States grand jury as part of an inquiry into corruption in world
soccer, says he knows why the organization’s president, Sepp Blatter, announced
plans to step down from soccer’s governing body.
“Blatter knows why he fell. And if anyone else knows, I do,” Mr.
Warner said in his home country of Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday,
referring to Mr. Blatter’s decision this week to resign after
17 years at the helm of FIFA, soccer’s governing body. Mr. Warner, who said he
feared for his own life, also said he had evidence linking FIFA to his
country’s 2010 election.
Mr. Warner was once a close ally of Chuck Blazer, the
former general secretary of Concacaf, the governing body that oversees soccer
in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Mr. Blazer has admitted
taking bribes from bidders seeking to host the 1998 and 2010 World Cups and is
now cooperating with the American authorities. On Wednesday, a judge in New
York ordered the release of a redacted version of his
plea hearing in 2013.
Mr. Warner’s sons, Daryan and Daryll, are also cooperating with
the authorities, having secretly pleaded guilty in
2013after they tried to deposit more than $600,000 in nearly two
dozen United States bank accounts in an attempt to avoid detection.
During a rambling and sometimes incoherent seven-minute
television address, called
“The Gloves Are Off,” Mr. Warner invoked Gandhi and sought to cast himself as a
victim. In his speech, a paid political advertisement, he said he had reams of
documents, including copies of checks, linking Mr. Blatter and other senior
FIFA officials to an effort to manipulate a 2010 election in Trinidad and
Tobago.
He said he had delivered his files to “respectable persons” and
lawyers, and he warned that he had an “avalanche” of additional evidence.
“I will no longer keep secrets for them who now seek to destroy
the country which I love,” he said.
Mr. Warner’s television address came just four days after he
vigorously defended himself in an online video,
saying the charges against him were a conspiracy cooked up by the United
States.
“All this has stemmed from the failed U.S. bid to host the World
Cup,” he said of the indictment then.
In the video, posted
Sunday on his personal website, Facebook page and YouTube channel, he cited an
article from The Onion that he said backed up his claims, apparently unaware
that it was satire. He also told his supporters that he was innocent of the
charges against him. “At the end of the day, all of the allegations against me
shall be proven to be unfounded,” he said.
It was not clear why FIFA would want to intervene in the
country’s electoral process, and Mr. Warner did not immediately provide any
evidence in the television address on Wednesday to support his claims.
“I apologize for not disclosing my knowledge of these events
before,” Mr. Warner said, calling himself a “lone isolated soldier.” He said
conditions in the jail where he was held briefly after his arrest last week had
been “woeful.”
He said nothing would prevent him from revealing details of the
scandal. “Not even death will stop the avalanche that is coming,” he told his
supporters. “The die is cast. There can be no turning back. Let the chips fall
where they fall.” Paraphrasing Gandhi, he said that throughout history, tyrants
have fallen in the end.
Mr. Warner also said he felt threatened, saying, “I reasonably
actually fear for my life.” Yet shortly after the speech was broadcast, he
appeared at a rally for his Independent Liberal Party, and seemed resolute.
Mr. Warner faces a raft of charges, including racketeering,
bribery, wire fraud and money laundering, but he denies the accusations. In
2004, as FIFA’s executive committee was deliberating where to hold the 2010
World Cup, South Africa’s government arranged for what amounted to a $10
million bribe to Mr. Warner and others in exchange for their votes, prosecutors
say.
According to the indictment, which was handed down May 20 but
announced last week, when FIFA was considering which country would host the
2006 World Cup, Mr. Warner sent a relative to a Paris hotel room to collect a
briefcase filled with $10,000 in cash from a South African bid committee
official.
South Africa has
emphatically denied giving any bribes to ensure that it would host the
tournament, but news reports on Thursday said the country’s organized-crime
unit had opened a preliminary investigation into the bribery accusations.
The Australian police are also investigating corruption
accusations in connection to the country’s bid for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar,
amid allegations that funds were misappropriated. The chairman of Football
Federation Australia, Frank Lowy, published an open letter on
Wednesday in which he cited an investigation by Concacaf showing that Mr.
Warner had committed fraud and misappropriated the funds.
Australian officials in recent days have been expressing their
deep disappointment at losing the World Cup to Qatar, and some critics of the
Qatari bid are hoping that it will lose the tournament, even as officials there
insist that their bid was above reproach and that the tournament is not under
threat. The sports minister of the Australian state of Victoria, John Eren,
said his country could host the World Cup “tomorrow.”
Elsewhere, the former England soccer captain David Beckham added
his voice to those in European soccer who have grown weary of Mr. Blatter. “I
hope at last we are now moving in the right direction,” he was quoted as saying
by the BBC. “Some of the things that we now know happened were despicable,
unacceptable and awful for the game we love so much.”
Mr. Beckham, who rose to global stardom playing for Manchester
United, was a central supporter of England’s unsuccessful bid to host the World
Cup in 2018, which was awarded to Russia.
