MIAMI: Former FIFA officials Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer face possible legal action from soccer’s ruling body and probes from the FBI and Internal Revenue Service after a report found they had committed serious acts of fraud.
CONCACAF, which governs the sport in North and Central America and the Caribbean, made public on Friday an Integrity Committee report which highlighted the misuse of millions of dollars from the late 1990s.
On Sunday, Warner, the former CONCACAF president, resigned from his post as minister of national security in the government of Trinidad & Tobago. He followed that up on Monday by resigning as chairman of the United National Congress party.
The Integrity Committee has been asked to come up with recommendations on what steps CONCACAF should now take, while the confederation is also taking legal advice.
The report detailed Warner’s private ownership of what CONCACAF believed was its own $ 25-million Center of Excellence in his native Trinidad.
The report also described how American Blazer, CONCACAF’s former general secretary, had taken $ 15 million in commissions from 1998 onwards without any agreement on those payments in place.
The ‘forensic audit’ found Blazer had used the organization’s funds to “finance his personal lifestyle,” including purchasing plush apartments in Miami’s South Beach and attempting to do the same in the Bahamas while failing to produce tax returns.
Blazer and Warner have denied any wrongdoing.
The confederation is weighing up its legal options and there is certainly no mood to ‘forgive and forget’ among the body’s new leadership.
Warner and Blazer face likely legal cases and FBI probe
