The world waits with bated breath for former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner to spill the beans.
|||The sight of an elderly man of 72, briefcase in hand and waving almost lethargically to people calling out his name, would not normally make for great TV footage.
But when that man is Austin Warner, better known as Jack, it is a different story altogether.
This is the man who attacked Roy Keane in September 2008 when Dwight Yorke, who was playing for Sunderland, quit the Trinidad and Tobago national team.
Warner blamed this on the temperamental Keane.
Today Warner is the man at the centre of the Fifa corruption scandal, blown wide open by the US authorities investigating it.
But he is an enigma.
At the height of this tsunami around him, he makes time to address supporters of his political party back home in Trinidad and Tobago, where he was once the national minister of security.
He has worn many hats in his life, but it was as vice-president of Fifa and president of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) that Warner cast a dark spell over South Africa.
The country’s relationship with him is an albatross around its neck. The story is that Warner took money under the table to hand us the hosting rights to the 2010 World Cup.
Money changed hands and the charge sheet of the FBI alleges that Warner’s bank balance grew fatter.
Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula denies this.
Warner was not alone in this scam as other high-ranking Fifa officials, including Nicolas Leoz, are the subject of this American swoop on world football corruption.
Those like Warner, who have not been nabbed, are subject to Interpol’s red alerts.
Everyone else who has taken money has said aye about their involvement, but Warner continues to say nay.
Former Fifa executive member Chuck Blazer has led the confessions, admitting benefiting improperly from the awarding of the World Cup to South Africa.
But instead of admitting to this corruption, Warner told members of his Independent Liberal Party (ILP) that he had his own dossier of wrongdoing on Fifa president Sepp Blatter, who has stepped down as head of soccer’s controlling body.
Warner reportedly said he had documents and cheques that linked Fifa officials, “including embattled president Sepp Blatter, to the 2010 election in Trinidad and Tobago”.
He seems to blame everyone but himself in the current mess, “a criminal enterprise that involved $150 million (R1.9bn) in bribes”.
“I will no longer keep secrets for those who actively seek to destroy the country,” Warner said.
When it finally dawned on him that the issue at hand was football corruption and his role in it, especially the bribe from South Africa, Warner said in his frail septuagenarian’s voice: “It is not true that they gave me any bribe.”
It has since emerged that his son Daryll sold 2010 World Cup tickets at highly inflated prices, netting himself handsome profits. This is the same son who runs the family business empire back home.
In fact, both his sons. Daryll and Daryan, have agreed to assist American authorities as part of separate plea deals.
But the old man wants to tell the world it is Blatter who is corrupt, not him.
He’s had several run-ins with Blatter, since the time he left in 2011.
If he did not jump, he stood to be pushed.
A university graduate, he’s an educated man with, clearly, a sharp mind that seems to be leaving him.
He now believes in his own phantom of invincibility.
A Concacaf Integrity Report released two years ago cast him in a bad light and he had to resign as a member of parliament in Trinidad and Tobago. His detractors – and they aren’t few in the Caribbean – have accused him of using Concacaf as his cash cow.
Instead of confronting the issue, Warner formed his own political party.
However, he did not fool everyone. In a July 6, 2013 report, the Jamaica Observer wrote the following: “But in an immediate response, Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar told supporters of her ruling United National Congress (UNC) that Warner’s move was designed to bring down your duly elected government.”
Warner the father, businessman, politician has his flaws. But as a football chief, he’s been particularly damaging to the integrity of South Africa.
The world waits with bated breath for Warner to spill the beans as he’s promised. Hopefully he will, if this is not another one of his wily ways to wriggle out of a spot of bother.
He’s done it before.
from Soccer Soccer Extended RSS http://ift.tt/1KNv23Q
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