Leaked video of gifts advice is a conspiracy, says Warner

Jack Warner has claimed the leak of a video appearing to show him urging officials to accept cash gifts from Mohamed Bin Hammam shows there is a “conspiracy” against Caribbean football.

Warner, who quit as a Fifa vice-president in June after being charged with bribery, said the timing of the leak in a week in which 15 Caribbean officials are facing ethics committee hearings showed Fifa was prepared to do all it could to defend its position.

Warner said in an email to a news agency: “The release of this video is tantamount to contempt because it seeks to influence international opinion against what is clearly a conspiracy against the delegates of the Caribbean Football Union.

“Moreover, there are a lot more questions which the Fifa should answer from this convenient revelation.

“The Caribbean delegates are currently in Zurich and are actively involved in disciplinary proceedings established by the Fifa so this leak is clearly subjudicious and contrary to the very principles of law and justice.

“Regretfully, this is what defines the Fifa; a perceived right to do all in its power, right or wrong, to defend its own.”

Warner said the fact his speech was filmed, understood to have been on a mobile phone, was evidence of “entrapment”.

He added: “Never before has a covert video been made, let alone been published, in the history of CFU.

“It is clear that those who recorded the meeting and subsequently made certain that the video went global, are engaged in entrapment.

“It is, therefore, not paranoia nor mindless talk to speak of a conspiracy by those who had an agenda: the one to weaken the Concacaf through its largest voting bloc, the CFU, and thus ascertain that Caribbean men and women are excluded from the decision-making process in Concacaf and Fifa in the future.”

Warner went on to highlight the Swiss influence at Fifa, including president Sepp Blatter, the chairman of the ethics committee, Claudio Sulser, and the chairman of the disciplinary committee, Marcel Mathier.

“The Swiss seem to have a morality of its own,” said Warner, who added that he had more revelations to come. “Fifa cannot be allowed to continue tarnishing the images and characters of good men,” said Warner. The video recording of a speech made by Warner to members of the CFU on 11 May is being used as evidence in Fifa ethics committee hearings into charges against 15 of those officials this week. The video shows Warner telling members they are not obliged to vote for Bin Hammam in the Fifa presidential election but that he had told the Qatari to bring cash. Bin Hammam was banned for life in July by Fifa’s ethics committee but is appealing.

The speech took place in Trinidad a day after cash gifts of $40,000 each were handed out to the leaders of Caribbean associations.

Warner says on the video: “I said to him [Bin Hammam] if you bring cash, I don’t want you to give cash to anybody, but when you do you can give it to the CFU and the CFU will give it to his members. Because I don’t want it to even remotely appear that anyone has any obligation to vote for you because of what gifts you have given them, and he fully accepted that.”