A football untouchable

Long before the world got a front row seat to the dramatic play-by-play Warner/Mohamed bin Hammam betrayal and Blatter-exacted revenge for challenge to his leadership, the island schoolteacher-turned football-jefe-turned-politician was using his FIFA connections to build a US multi-million dollar family empire with the full protection of FIFA’s oligarch.

And, as this special Sunday Express investigation has found, the list of Warner-committed football-related heists is as long as it is rich.

From huge cash transfers from the national football federation to private and other Warner-controlled accounts to the controversial sale of World Cup TV rights for the Caribbean and the black market trade of 2006 World Cup tickets, among other things.

A review of private and long-sought documents, including FIFA board minutes, a FIFA-commissioned 2006 Ernst & Young forensic audit into a Warner-run World Cup tickets racket, World Cup broadcast licence agreement signed with Warner’s Cayman company and a damning May 3, 2002 confidential report by former FIFA General Secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen reveal an abuse of authority, self-serving deals and the raw pursuit of personal profit.

From all of the evidence, Warner not only took advantage of any money-making opportunity to come his way, he created opportunities to grow his family fortune. The evidence also showed a complete disregard for accounting rules and built-in conflicts of interest.

In his first tickets racket in 1989, Warner, the then general secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago National Football Federation (TTFF) risked public safety by printing some 20,000 tickets more than the national stadium could accommodate for a crucial World Cup qualifier with the United States.

Nearly 35,000 people crammed into the stadium, thousands more could not get in and the maxi taxi that was taking the national team inside the stadium was mobbed, according to the then national coach Gally Cummings.

He recalled tense moments when angry fans unable to get inside the Hasely Crawford Stadium hurled abuse at the players and used their fists to pound on the vehicle transporting the team.
The players were rescued by members of the Defence Force.

Relations between the former professional player-turned national coach and Warner soured when Cummings refused Warner’s request to go on national TV in the aftermath of the ticketing scandal with a script that said the game was not oversold. Cummings said Warner had him fired and blacklisted from professional coaching jobs in St Vincent and Grenada, among other places where Warner/Concacaf-influence had currency.

He said subsequent offers to coach the national Under-17 team and other football prospects were withdrawn after Warner’s spite and intervention got in the way. He said the powerful football figure wielded tremendous influence in the region and more than 20 years later: “To this day, I cannot get a job as a national coach.”

Cummings, who has a passion for the game and country, filed a complaint with the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) in 2010 which after 18 months determined that his complaint against Warner had “no status”.

He said he has no idea what that means and his enquiries were met with a rude response.

 Warner escaped unscathed from the 1989 ticketing debacle and by 2006, he had finessed his game.

 He made millions of dollars touting 2006 World Cup tickets at inflated prices on the black market in a scam that used his family travel business as a front for tour packages to matches involving England, Mexico and Japan.

The World Cup ticketing deal was run through Simpaul’s Travel Service, a family-owned Port of Spain agency which had also been gifted with all of the travel business of the national football federation of which Warner was special adviser and his key lieutenants Oliver Camps and Richard Groden were top officials. Groden had secured Simpaul’s credentials with FIFA’s Ticketing Office (FTO) by naming the agency as the official tour operator of the TTFF.

Warner was identified in a FIFA-commissioned report by auditors Ernst & Young as having bought World Cup tickets which were then re-sold at up to four times their face value.

A unique ticket bar code number led auditors to a customer reference number which trailed right back to Jack Warner, then a powerful FIFA vice-president and deputy chairman of FIFA’s Finance Committee.

 According to the Ernst & Young report, Warner’s son, Daryan collected an initial order placed for World Cup tickets for different matches at the Intercontinental Hotel in Germany on June 14, 2006. The documents trail showed that the Warner-collected tickets changed hands with a Florida-based tickets agency, Kick Sports Inc which in turn sold the tickets to a Swiss Travel company, GTU Travel AG for Euro 400 apiece, collectively Euro 80,000, a staggering Euro 60,000 more than face value.

The Ernst & Young report said the FIFA ExCo (Executive Committee) member paid for the tickets with his credit card and that an additional order placed with the FTO on June 23, 2006 for 1,245 tickets for second round matches was refused. Warner’s game was busted by GTU which filed a grievance complaint with the FTO in Berlin after Kick Sports failed to deliver all of the tickets within the agreed to timeframe.

The Swiss company claimed that it was forced to find alternative sources for the prized tickets at considerable expense to the company. The auditor’s report identified Kick Sports as a business partner of Simpaul’s Travel Services. The Warner family-owned business was also running another scam selling World Cup ticket packages straight out of the member Association’s allocation.

The agency’s initial orders for accommodation relating to the packages under scrutiny were made in June 2005 through FIFA’s World Cup Accommodation Services (FAS). The Warner agency also made separate ticket requests to the FTO, according to the Ernst & Young report, which found that the packages were sold to local fans and agents around the world at vastly inflated prices.

Daryan Warner, the agency’s managing director initially agreed to co-operate and met with investigators in Manchester but later changed tack, saying he had no more information to provide. He confirmed that some of the payments to FAS were made through one of his private companies, Nauti Krew, which has as its registered address, 31 Sunset Drive, Bayshore.

Ernst & Young reported that information requests made to Daryan Warner for specific bank details for payments and receipts were refused.

He told investigators he saw “no middle ground” to the situation and that in his view, the matter was potentially more damaging to FIFA than to him.

He also instructed several related parties to ignore FIFA’s requests for information. The Warner agency was said to have made about US$1 million in profit and Jack Warner was found guilty of violating FIFA’s code of ethics.

Private minutes of a 2006 FIFA ExCo meeting record members “disapproval” of Warner’s lack of integrity but in a strong defence of the man he once described as “a wonderful and loyal friend”, Blatter countered that there was “no concrete evidence” that the vice-president himself had played an active role in the ticketing scandal.

And, as with the all the other Warner-related scandals, the FIFA oligarch had Jack Warner’s back when the going got tough.

In his bid to downplay Warner’s role in the affair, Blatter said: “The Executive Committee has expressed its disapproval over the conduct of Mr Warner. This disapproval of the conduct of the vice-president draws his attention to the fact that he should be more prudent and cautious when it comes to ticketing and should also oversee the activities of his son a little more. That is all there is to say in relation to this affair and we now consider the matter closed.”

Blatter said it would be up to the FIFA administration whether Warner’s family travel business would be allowed to sell tickets for future World Cups.

The disciplinary committee of the world football governing body also rejected Warner’s criticism of the then FIFA general secretary Urs Linsi, FIFA’s Administration and the auditors engaged to investigate the ticketing affair, Ernst & Young.

Daryan Warner was later made the fall guy in the ticketing case and was secretly fined close to US$1 million by FIFA. British investigative journalist Andrew Jennings was the first to report details of the fine in his book, Foul: The Secret World of FIFA.

Jennings wrote that the Warners had paid only US$250,000 in December 2006.

Blatter’s goodwill to Warner ensured that the former ExCo member escaped any sanction despite FIFA’s ruling that he was guilty of an ethics violation. Warner told FIFA that he and his wife, Maureen had sold their shares in the travel company and had no idea he had violated any rules. Of course, he omitted to mention that two $1 shares were sold at the height of the tickets racket in 2006.

Warner, his wife Maureen and sons Daryan and Daryll all came off the company director registry in 2006 but were re-installed as directors of the travel agency by August 21, 2009.

And as before, FIFA Media provided a general response about corruption reform to a specific question relating to the governing body’s failure to impose any disciplinary action in the face of its own guilty ruling in the ticketing case involving Warner.