A project Mbalula named as the beneficiary of the $10m windfall is registered in the name of Jack Warner and his wife.
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Johannesburg - A development project named by Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula as the intended beneficiary of the $10 million windfall from the proceeds of the Fifa 2010 World Cup is in fact registered in the name of disgraced former Concacaf president Jack Warner and his wife, and not that of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU).
This week, Mbalula told a press conference that the agreement had been “for the allocated funds to the Concacaf to be provided to the CFU and utilised for the Dr Joao Havelange Centre of Excellence” in Port-of-Spain in Trinidad and Tobago.
“It is named after the former Fifa president and is a centre committed to the development of football across the whole Caribbean.”
The Sunday Independent has established that the facility had been in existence for 10 years at the time of the payment.
According to a Concacaf Integrity Committee Report, the Centre of Excellence, valued at between $22.5m and $25.5m, belonged to Warner from the time of its construction in 1998.
He had registered it in the names of two of his companies – CCAM and Company, and Renraw Investments.
Warner and his wife, Maureen, are listed as directors for both companies. Also, the land on which the centre was built is owned by Warner.
Ownership was transferred to him and Renraw Investments from Syrian businessman and Trinidad’s Guardian newspaper owner Dr Anthony Norman Sabga and First Caribbean International Bank director Michael Kelvin Mansoo in October 1998.
In May 2012, Fifa president Sepp Blatter said the football controlling body would attempt to retrieve control of the centre through legal means.
But this was not done.
Warner has not handed the facility over to Concacaf since resigning in 2011. Fifa is continuing to pay rent to Warner for space it is using at the centre for its development office.
Mbalula said: “As to the allegations made about how that money was utilised, that is another story for the investigators and those who have got information on their side.
“We are told, we do not know, that the money was misused and all of that. (Nor) are we in a position to accuse anybody.
“You must understand that when we organised the World Cup, we were not dealing with gangsters; we were dealing with people. The fact that they are later tagged as gangsters is not our problem.”
In 2012, Trinidad’s Saturday Express reported that Fifa was alleging that Warner owned the Dr Joao Havelange Centre of Excellence at Macoya.
Warner countered that it belonged to the CFU, of which he is a former president.
The paper reported Warner had denied reports that he was owner of the sporting complex, which is the home base of Warner’s Joe Public Football Club.
News coming out of the Fifa congress in Budapest, Hungary, that year claimed the centre was signed over to Warner’s family businesses.
Concacaf, which governs football in North and Central America and the Caribbean, held its congress in Budapest in 2012, where newly elected president, Cayman Islander Jeffrey Webb, raised irregularities revolving around the ownership of the centre, which was built with Fifa money.
Concacaf said it had begun legal steps to recover the facility from Warner, who had by then resigned as Concacaf president and Fifa vice-president amid a scandal involving CFU officials and alleged bribes-for-votes for Fifa presidential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam.
Hammam was expelled from his Fifa post in the wake of the scandal.
Warner was among 14 Fifa officials who were arrested by the FBI last week for a bribing scandal that spans over two decades.
Sunday Independent
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