Warner, who is an influential politician in his homeland of Trinidad & Tobago and was also serving as the head of the Caribbean Football Union and the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) prior to his ban, announced his decision to step down in a letter to FIFA’s ethics committee. Earlier this month FIFA hired FBI director Louis Freeh to investigate bribery claims against Warner and Mohamed Bin Hammam, the president of the Asian Football Confederation.
However, following his decision to end his association with FIFA, the ethics committee immediately dropped its follow-up investigation into his conduct. “Mr Warner is leaving FIFA by his own volition after nearly 30 years of service, having chosen to focus on his important work on behalf of the people and government of Trinidad & Tobago as a Cabinet Minister and as the Chairman of the United National Congress, the major party in his country’s coalition government,” read a statement from FIFA.
“As a consequence of Mr Warner’s self-determined resignation, all Ethics Committee procedures against him have been closed and the presumption of innocence is maintained,” FIFA added. Warner and Bin Hammam were suspended from FIFA on May 29 after Chuck Blazer, who worked as CONCACAF’s general secretary under Warner for two decades, claimed the pair tried to bribe Caribbean voters to vote for Bin Hammam in the recent FIFA presidential election. Following Bin Hammam’s suspension, incumbent Sepp Blatter was re-elected unopposed to the helm of the governing body.
Warner told Bloomberg that he was quitting FIFA because he had lost “enthusiasm” for the job. “The general secretary that I had employed, who worked with me for 21 years, with the assistance of elements of FIFA has sought to undermine me in ways that are unimaginable,” he said. “I’ve been hung out to dry continually and I’m not prepared to take that.” Warner added that “all this would never have happened” had he made public a promised declaration for Blatter in May and he also insisted that gift-giving during lobbying had been a part of FIFA’s culture for years.
“It’s not unusual for such things to happen and gifts have been around throughout the history of FIFA,” Warner said. “What’s happening now for me is hypocrisy.” He continued: “At the end of the day I don’t want to be seen to be vengeful. I am saying over time history will judge Mr Blatter...I don’t know who’s a friend and who’s a foe...In retrospect possibly my friends, who I thought of as my friends, have been foes and possibly my foes have been friends. In fullness of time I’ll be able to see better who was foe and who was friend.”
