For several years, former vice-president of Fifa, Jack Warner, has fought a bitter battle. A fight to avoid being extradited to the United States. Jack Warner was one of football’s most powerful men. For a number of years he sat as vice-president of Fifa and as president of the North and Central American Football Association. Warner helped vote for Qatar as World Cup host in 2010. There have been many accusations and indictments against the 79-year-old man from Trinidad and Tobago. Warner was suspended from Fifa in 2011, but he has never been convicted in the legal system. The reason for that is that he has lived in his home country for the past few years. He is indicted in the United States, but has never attended any hearings. On Thursday, a court in London, the highest court of appeal in the British Commonwealth, ruled that Warner’s appeal has been rejected, writes Reuters. This makes it possible for Warner to eventually be extradited. news called Jack Warner this week. We managed to introduce ourselves before he started to speak: – I’m not going to answer any questions about football. I have said that ten thousand times in the last five or ten years. Don’t ask me about football, Warner said before hanging up. VIDEO: Here news calls Jack Warner. If indeed Warner is extradited to the United States and eventually convicted, he will become the first person convicted of corruption directly related to the Qatar award. At the same time, the award is overshadowed by a large number of other people who have been charged, arrested and suspended. When Blatter lost control Zurich, 2 December 2010: – The winner is Qatar, says then Fifa president Sepp Blatter as he pulls a note out of an envelope on stage in Zurich. In the hall sat a long line of celebrities. The Emir of Qatar stood up with the delegation from the desert country and cheered wildly. At the same time, many sat in the hall and wondered what was happening now. CRISIS: Sepp Blatter was in charge of Fifa when scandal after scandal unfolded. Here from a press conference in 2018. Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP Little did they know about what had taken place before the vote. Even less did they know about the FBI investigation going on behind the scenes. Nobody knew what enormous consequences this would have for Fifa and the 22 men who together awarded the World Cup to Qatar. – It was wrong to give Qatar the World Cup in football, Sepp Blatter stated last week. After the award, many asked questions about how this could happen and what consequences it might have. – There is a suspicion, especially in the allocation to Qatar, that money must have been involved. In Fifa’s own analysis of the applications, it is clear that Qatar was not the best option. So people thought, “How in the world did this happen?” Miles Coleman tells news. Coleman has just made the Netflix documentary “Fifa Uncovered”. In working on the documentary, he has spoken to a long line of football’s most powerful and hated people. PRODUCER: Miles Coleman has spoken to a long list of the men who voted for Qatar as World Cup host. Photo: Lars Thomas Nordby / news So there were 22 men who sat on Fifa’s executive committee (Exco) and decided who would get the WC. There were supposed to be 24, but two had already been suspended because it had been revealed that they were willing to sell their votes. The 22 men had a secret election. In the final round of votes, Qatar received 14 votes, while the United States received eight. – You can see it in Blatter’s face when he opens the envelope that this is going to be a big problem. It was here that Blatter lost control of the Exco, says Coleman. Envelopes with 40,000 dollars We saw the first consequences the following summer, in July 2011. Fifa had received a tip about one of the members of the Exco. The tip was about Mohammed Bin Hamman from Qatar having given out envelopes with 40,000 dollars to representatives from CONCACAF, i.e. the football confederation in North and Central America. Fifa’s ethics committee took action and banned Bin Hammam for life. The Qatari had long doubted whether his home country’s WC application was the best, but had eventually decided to support Qatar’s application. At this time, Bin Hammam was the head of the Asian Football Confederation and at the same time wanted to become Fifa president. BANNED: Mohammed Bin Hammam was banned from Fifa in 2011. Photo: Steffen Schmidt / AP Bin Hammam appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and had the appeal approved a year later. In the meantime, he had stood as a presidential candidate against Sepp Blatter for the election in 2011. But just before the election, Bin Hammam withdrew, allegedly in an agreement between the emir of Qatar and the then Fifa president. The agreement is said to have meant that Blatter would stop criticizing Qatar if Bin Hammam withdrew from the presidential campaign. That’s how it turned out. Bin Hammam resigned. Later that year he was again banned from Fifa for life. The reason this time was a conflict of interest. This time he actually disappeared for good. Pleaded guilty to corruption As Bin Hammam handed envelopes to representatives of CONCACAF, we continue the story with a closer look at the confederation of North and Central America. This association had three people on the Exco when Qatar was awarded the World Cup: Chuck Blazer (USA), Jack Warner (Trinidad and Tobago) and Rafael Salguero (Guatemala). Here it is also worth noting that there is a kind of unwritten law that if a confederation applies for the WC, the representatives from this confederation must vote on this WC application. The USA applied for the World Cup in 2022. We know that Sepp Blatter voted for the USA, so you could count on the USA getting at least four votes in the first round of voting. But the USA only got three, so at least one of the three from CONCACAF voted for another country. ALLIES: Chuck Blazer (left) worked closely with Jack Warner for a number of years. When Warner voted for Qatar in the World Cup award in 2010, Blazer was furious. He later reported Warner to the police in the United States. Photo: Wilfredo Lee / AP On a November day in 2011, barely a year after Qatar won the World Cup, Chuck Blazer drives his scooter through the streets of New York. He is on his way from Trump Tower, where he disposes of two apartments: one for himself and one for his cats. Suddenly he is stopped FBI agents. They have already discovered that Blazer has not paid taxes for many years. They give the American an ultimatum: He can become an informant for the FBI or he can be taken by the police right then and there. Blazer chooses the first. That election was a breakthrough for the FBI. Suddenly they had access to what was actually happening in Fifa. The information Blazer gave the FBI helped form the basis for a long series of arrests and convictions in later times. In an attempt to save himself, Blazer named both of the other two CONCACAF members on the FIFA board, namely his former ally Jack Warner and Rafael Salguero. – Jack Warner is particularly relevant to this story because people believe he voted for Qatar in exchange for money. That is the accusation, says Netflix producer Coleman. Two Exco members from South America were also prosecuted following information from Blazer: Nicolas Leoz and Ricardo Teixeira. The last member of the South American soccer federation, Julio Grondona, died in 2014. The following year, Fifa accused him of paying $10 million in bribes. Prosecutors in the US claim this bribe was to secure South Africa’s World Cup in 2010. MONEY: In 2015, a comedian threw a wad of money at Sepp Blatter at a press conference. – Here is the payment from North Korea’s World Cup application in 2026, said the comedian as dollar bills rained down on Blatter. Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP – World Cup in fraud Zurich, 27 May 2015: Three and a half years after Chuck Blazer became an informant for the FBI, all the FIFA top brass are gathered in the same city as the World Cup award in 2010. It is Fifa- congress where Sepp Blatter is once again running for re-election. The election will take place two days later. Blatter had been president and supreme leader of Fifa for 17 years. His opponent was the prince of Jordan, Ali bin Hussain. This is the day the FBI decides to strike. In the morning, together with the Swiss police, they go into action against the five-star hotel Baur au Lac. One by one, Fifa tops are taken out. Hidden behind white sheets, they are placed in cars and driven away. 18 people were charged at this time – later a further 16 people were charged. – This is really a World Cup in fraud and today we give Fifa a red card, said the head of the investigation in the FBI, Richard Weber when the charges were made public. PRESS CONFERENCE: Attorney General of the United States, Loretta Lynch, held a press conference the day after the arrests in Zurich. There she told them that they were investigating Fifa as if they were a mafia organisation. Photo: SPENCER PLATT / AFP The chaos was complete. New messages about people who had been arrested kept coming in. President Blatter was not among them. When he opened the congress the next day, he said: – I know that many people hold me accountable, but I cannot monitor everyone all the time. If people want to do something wrong they will also try to hide it. We have lost trust and now we have to rebuild it through the actions we take, Blatter said from the podium. Blatter won the election on 29 May with 133 to 73 votes. He was determined that he was the right man to lead the organization forward. When he was asked why he did not want to resign, he replied as follows: – It is very easy. I have seen the results of yesterday’s vote. Congress believes that I am still the right person to handle and solve these problems, Blatter said at a press conference. Only a few days later, however, Blatter had to resign after intense pressure. Half a year later, both he and Uefa president Michel Platini are banned from all football for eight years for a financial transaction approved by Blatter to Platini in particular. This summer they had to appear in court over the same money transaction. They were acquitted, but the case has been appealed. Last man standing There are several who sat on the Exco in 2010 who have been both investigated and suspended. In total, nine out of 22 members have had an indictment brought against them by the police. In addition, seven people have been banned from Fifa for breaching ethical regulations. Five resigned more or less voluntarily from the board. But even among them one finds controversies. One of those who has resigned is, for example, Vitaly Mutko, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. He was sports minister in Russia during the doping scandal at the Sochi Olympics in 2014. Many have pointed to him as one of the main men behind the Russian scandal. But he has never been formally banned from Fifa. FIFA BOARD: Hany Abo Rida still sits on the board of Fifa. He has done that since 2009. Photo: MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY / Reuters Then there is only one man left: Hany Abo Rida from Egypt. There have also been rumors about Abo Rida, but he has neither been suspended nor prosecuted for anything. Abo Rida still sits on the board of Fifa to this day, as he has done since before the World Cup was awarded to Qatar.
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This happened to the men who gave the Qatar WC – news Sport – Sports news, results and broadcasting schedule
