Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has sent transcripts and the video of Minister of Works Austin Jack Warner offering advice on “gifts” from former FIFA presidential candidate, Qatari Mohammed bin Hamman, to Caribbean Football Union (CFU) officials to Attorney General Anand Ramlogan.
The prime minister said she saw the video and read the transcripts and decided to hand the entire matter to the attorney general.
Warner resigned as FIFA vice-president earlier this year after allegations surfaced that he urged fellow CFU officials to accept US$40,000 cash gifts from Hammam, who was seeking to become FIFA’s to unseat Sepp Blatter.
Recently an English newspaper, The Telegraph released a tape allegedly showing Warner offering advice on gifts to CFU officials at a conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Port of Spain in May this year.
The Telegraph ran an exclusive story headlined “Former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner is caught on tape offering ‘gifts’ of 25,000 pounds sterling to Caribbean delegates.”
The Telegraph Sport said it has seen remarkable footage in which Warner, the controversial former vice-president of Fifa, appears to be recorded telling other CFU members they must decide whether to accept the “gifts” of US$40,000 each and urging them to vote for bin Hammam in the recent Fifa presidential elections.
The recording was made on May 11, 2011 the day after the money is alleged to have offered the money in individual brown envelopes and was being used as evidence at a FIFA Ethics Committee hearing recently at which 16 CFU officials are accused of violating Fifa’s code of ethics.
Warner has admitted that the voice on the exclusive video posted on the Internet by Telegraph newspaper in London was his own.
He admitted telling the delegates at the meeting to take the money and use it for development.
He said the tapes were doctored and would not deny anything he had said about the entire matter.
