Warner dismisses FIFA talk about missing aid money

Thursday, February 16, 2012

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Former football strongman Jack Warner has brushed aside comments by football's world governing body, FIFA, that it was awaiting an explanation about the whereabouts of emergency aid money intended for Haiti which had been sent to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation two years ago.

Warner, who is now a senior government minister in the coalition People's Partnership government here, told reporters that he had nothing to answer to anyone and dismissed the FIFA allegation that was also published in London's Sunday Times newspaper on February 11.

"Let them write, when I want to talk I will talk. I have nothing to answer to anybody," Warner told reporters Tuesday, adding that "you can't take every foolish report that appears in a newspaper and ask me questions about it.

"This happened, I mean, imagine two years ago, two years ago (and) something has now been raised, ask yourself why guys," Warner said, describing the newspaper article as "a foolish article".

In a statement sent to the international news agency, Reuters, FIFA said that US$250,000 had been wired to the TTFF at Warner's request following the Haiti earthquake, but the Haiti federation said it had only received US$60,000.

Warner at the time was a powerful FIFA vice-president, executive committee member and was also head of the North, Central American and Caribbean (CONCACAF) Confederation and the Caribbean Football Union.

He resigned all his posts last year at the height of the now infamous bribery scandal.

FIFA said it still had not received "a satisfactory response" about what happened to the remaining US$190,000 and had stopped further payments to the Trinidad federation.

"We can confirm that FIFA wired immediately after the devastating earthquake US$250,000 as an emergency aid for Haiti to the account of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF)," the FIFA statement said.

The earthquake on January 12, 2010 killed an estimated 300,000 people and left more than a million others homeless. A number of Haitian football executives were also killed.

Warner said he was disappointed that the media found it necessary to ask him questions about that matter and questioned why the local media were publishing stories first without having them investigated first.

"Then of course FIFA withholds Jack Warner's pension. News for Jack Warner, but of course that's okay," he said, adding "to make me look bad? Let me tell you something. There is nothing anybody could say or do to make me look bad anymore.