A troubled ex-member of international soccer’s governing body threatens to release an “avalanche” of secrets to drag the whole organization down with him.
Jack Warner, a former top figure in soccer in the Western Hemisphere and also a former FIFA vice president, is being sought by American authorities for corruption but he says he won’t go down silently.
Oddly, Warner thinks his life is in danger over the corruption indictment, but despite the danger he sees he says he will release info about now former FIFA chief Sepp Blatter and others.
In new video message he has titled, “Jack Warner: The Gloves Are Off,” Warner warns that he has assembled a series of documents that chronicle wide-ranging corruption in soccer.
In the message aired Wednesday on TV in his native country of Trinidad and Tobago, Warner said he would “no longer keep secrets for those persons who now seek actively to destroy this country’s hard-won international image.”
“I also will give them my knowledge of financial transactions at FIFA, including, but not limited to, Sepp Blatter,” Warner continued. “I have been there for 30 consecutive years. I was a heartbeat away from Blatter. I said to him in 2011, ‘It’s time—at 75—it’s time to step down.”
“I apologize for not disclosing my knowledge of these events before,” he added. “Not even death will stop the avalanche that is coming.”
It should be noted, though, that Warner has made these allegations before and not followed through. In 2011 Warner warned of a “football tsunami” but never released the information he claimed was at his finger tips.
Additionally, Warner has been under a cloud of corruption at least since 2011 when he was forced to step down as an 18-year member of FIFA’s executive committee.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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