A word on this latest secret video business with Jack Warner. That the guy gives a bad name to football officials everywhere, past or present, is beyond dispute. Going by his extensive rap sheet, he’s an avaricious grub. Andrew Jennings memorably called him a “racist kleptomaniac”.
CONCACAF and FIFA are clearly in a better place without him, even if he still outrageously draws a pension for agreeing to parachute out of the game rather than face an ethics committee investigation into his role in the Port of Spain bribes affair, into which the same “eth-co” is now investigating 15 Caribbean Football Union delegates who accepted the cash “gifts”.
He’s accused FIFA itself of leading a “conspiracy” against him and the CFU 15 by leaking the tape to the press and constitutes an act that “clearly sub-judicious and contrary to the very principles of law and justice”.
Moreover he charges “this is what defines FIFA: a perceived right to do all in its power, right or wrong, to defend its own”.
Says Warner: “The CFU delegates must be found guilty if Sepp Blatter is to appear as an honourable man weeding out corruption from FIFA. So the tiny union in the Caribbean must be the scapegoat; and a team of officials, all Swiss and strategically located along FIFA’s hierarchical strata, is in place to ensure that their Swiss brother, Sepp Blatter, emerges with his integrity intact.”
Frankly, for about the first time I can remember and putting aside the loony talk of a Frederick Forsyth-like conspiracy of cantons, Warner is right.
The man was quite happy to play FIFA’s sleazy game while he was in power and, as we saw during the World Cup bidding process, whore any integrity he might have had in exchange for favours. Morally he has no leg to stand on. But his observation about Zurich’s selective application of justice is completely accurate.
Mohamed Bin Hammam has been banned for life for doing the same thing Sepp Blatter did, doling out cash gifts to football associations with no caveats on how that money was spent. Recall, if you will, that a week before the CFU meeting in Port of Spain, Blatter gave a $1 million cheque to CONCACAF at the confederation’s congress in Miami without anyone’s approval or knowledge.
Michel Platini, the president of UEFA, and the man Warner fears will turn FIFA into a “French province, forever” if he takes over in 2015 when Blatter’s term ends, made a complaint about it to general secretary Jerome Valcke. Nothing happened. The finance committee, headed by Blatter’s vice-president Julio Grondona, subsequently approved the payment.
Blatter is still in power, untouchable. Bin Hammam has been expunged. Blatter gets his second act. Bin Hammam gets hooked off stage.
There’s something rotten in this story, and it’s not Warner.
This column was originally published by ESPN STAR Sports. Please check for new columns by me every Thursday at www.espnstar.com. Love to see you there.