Football’s most wanted, Jack Warner, finally free of extradiction to US in FifaGate case

 

Former FIFA vice president and Concacaf president Jack Warner, after 10 years of challenging Trinidad and Tobago extradition rules on a technicality, has finally avoided extradition to the US to face justice.

In May 2015 Warner was charged by the US Justice Department with 29 counts of wire fraud, racketeering, money laundering and bribery as part of the FIFAgate scandal that eventually saw 47 indictments issued against FIFA and international federation officials, and sports marketers.

Warner turned himself in to Trinidad and Tobago police soon after the indictments were issued and was released on bail. Since then he has been battling to remain in Trinidad arguing that any extradition was illegal under local law.

In a ruling delivered on Tuesday, at the Trinidad and Tobago High Court Justice Karen Reid said that Warner’s constitutional rights had been breached and that the proceedings were flawed.

At the heart of the dispute was an agreement allegedly made by former Trinidad and Tobago attorney general Faris Al-Rawi with the US Justice Department in 2015 that was made before he signed off on the authority for the chief magistrate to proceed with extradition proceedings.

That agreement supposedly outlined the criminal charges Warner would face in the US if extradited. No copy of that agreement can be found.

Robert Strang, who recently took over as lead counsel for the State in this case, agreed that Warner’s legal team had raised legitimate questions regarding the alleged agreement and that although the Attorney General’s Office had previously said there was an agreement document, it had later been unable to locate the agreement, suggesting its possible non-existence.

While the court has now dismissed the extradition order on the 84-year-old Warner, the lawyers have been ordered to return to court to ascertain whether a special arrangement for Warner’s extradition was in fact a fabrication and that one never actually existed.

Speaking to the Trinidad Express, Warner said: “I have been going through this struggle for ten years. The State presented 15 lawyers, seven of which are silk (senior counsel). I want to thank the Lord and I want to thank my team of attorneys led by Fyard Hosein, Rishi Dass, Sasha Bridgemohansingh and Anil Maraj.

“Like I said, for the past ten years, this has consumed my life so now I want to regain my life, whatever is left of it. I want to regain my life,” said Warner.

Winning the case against extradition doesn’t mean that Warner is innocent of the crimes charged in the 2015 US indictment. Rather it means he has got away with them if he had proven guilty, sending the message that in football and within FIFA’s corridors, crime really does pay.

It is estimated that Warner personally enriched himself by more than $20 million, that is likely a conservative figure.

Warner has spent 10 years looking over his shoulder waiting for the knock on the door that could send him to the US. Now he doesn’t have the fear of extradition and though he has his passport back he is still a wanted man in the US and is unlikely to ever to use it again.