Port-of-Spain: Works and Transport Minister Jack Warner who resigned from FIFA on Monday, says documents leaked to the media that shows him to be an accessory to corruption in the ongoing FIFA bribery charges, are malicious and intent on destroying his character.
Mr Warner issued the following statement a short while ago.
"It has come to my attention that an anonymous source is circulating to selected international media, a document dated June 17 purporting to be the FIFA's Ethics Committee "decision" into its ongoing investigation of alleged bid-rigging in the run up to the recent FIFA presidential election. I have been reliably informed that the purported "decision" document was neither released by nor was its circulation authorized by FIFA. As far as I have been able to establish, the purported FIFA Ethics Committee report which is being scurrilously circulated is merely a summary of the considerations on which the FIFA Ethics Committee decided on provisional suspensions and its call for a full hearing involving the subjects of the allegations on bid rigging.
It is instructive to note that the investigation into these allegations is still ongoing and therefore any suggestion that the report being circulated is the final conclusion of the FIFA Ethics Committee is both misleading and false. Everyone must therefore be well aware that this document is not the Ethics Committee Final Report.
In accordance with due process, the Secretariat of the FIFA Ethics Committee dispatched four copies of the conclusions of the preliminary investigation into FIFA bid-rigging, which took place on the end of May, directly to me. I am advised that one copy was sent to me by fax (which copy I am yet to receive), one by courier, DHL, one to my lawyer, with the fourth, being sent to me in care of CONCACAF office in New York. The copies sent to me and my attorney could not possibly have been accessed by any scurrilous party bent on the malice manifestly intended in the anonymous leaks to the media in an investigation that is still ongoing.
I can only therefore conclude that this development is part of an ongoing malicious agenda to destroy the cohesion which has made the Caribbean Football Union a factor to be reckoned with in FIFA affairs; and thus diminish CFU's significance in various areas of FIFA decision making.
Yesterday, in announcing my self determined resignation from the positions I held in world football, FIFA confirmed that its Ethics Committee procedures of which I was a subject had been discontinued.
In its statement, FIFA took pains to emphasize that the presumption of my innocence is maintained.
It is now evident that there are those in a section of the FIFA fraternity who are not only pathologically mendacious, but in the face of FIFA's stated position and its voluntary recognition of my contribution to world football and by definition to FIFA, will stop at no length to destroy my legacy and destabilize the Caribbean region whose interests I have always vigorously advocated.
Despite the attacks of division neither the Caribbean nor I will allow all that we stand for to be destroyed.
I expect that these vicious attacks will continue but I will confront them head on every time they arise. Let me once again reiterate for the sake of those with hidden agendas; I, Jack Warner did not partake in the distribution of any cash gifts to my members.
I hope for the good of the game ,good sense will prevail or at least I will continue to live in hope."
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