By Andrew Warshaw
April 26 – Embattled former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, renowned for his often outrageous rants during a scandal-tarnished career in football, launched one final no-holds-barred attack on his critics Thursday as he reluctantly stepped down as a politician in his native Trinidad and Tobago.
Warner, who resigned as Minister of National Security last weekend following explosive new accusations of corruption during his time as football’s most controversial powerbroker, used a stage-managed constituency meeting – dubbed “Straight Talk” – to announce he was quitting as a member of parliament but also to deliver a tell-all denunciation of his detractors.
Reading from a 33-page dossier laden with a spate of emotive language that detailed his involvement both in FIFA and government, Warner said his resignation would take effect from midnight Friday local time but that he would be seeking re-election.
Denouncing those who had “said every dirty thing under the sun” about him, Warner told supporters everything they wanted to hear by portraying himself as a corrupt-free upstanding individual who had been unfairly pursued by journalists.
Using Biblical references and all manner of emotional rhetoric to get his message across he described the world of international sports politics as “an arena of extremely high stakes” with those involved often “lured by the trappings of office and the craving for power.”
“It is against this background that I have found myself a keenly pursued target,” said Warner who, not for the first time, used words like “hounded,” “persecuted” and “character assassination”.
Warner, who stepped down from all footballing positions in 2011 in the wake of the infamous cash-for-votes scandal rather than face a FIFA ethics probe, had steadfastly clung to power in his own country despite a succession of further damaging allegations about his conduct.
Time finally caught up with the one-time CONCACAF President, arguably the most discredited senior figure in the history of football politics, when delegates at CONCACAF’s congress in Panama heard how Warner, who ran the confederation for over 20 years, had tricked the region, which represents football in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, out of ownership of a $26m Centre of Excellence in Port of Spain.
Warner and one-time CONCACAF general secretary Chuck Blazer, the one-time double act who fell out spectacularly and ended up as bitter foes, were denounced as “fraudulent in their management” of CONCACAF in a 113-page independent audit carried out by David Simmons, a former Barbados chief justice who heads CONCACAF’s Integrity Committee. The report found that Warner did not disclose to CONCACAF or FIFA that the Centre of Excellence was built on land owned by his companies. Warner, the audit said, had “deceived persons and organisations” into believing the facility was CONCACAF’s and not his. He was also accused of misappropriating at least $15m by compensating himself with CONCACAF funds without authorisation after his last contract expired in July 1998.
Delivering what he insisted were “cold hard facts” Warner responded by declaring he had never used politics “to enrich my wealth or fatten my bank accounts”.
He insisted his conduct was at all times honest and that he was in fact res