Independent Liberal Party (ILP) leader Jack Warner is now a man with “nothing to lose” after spending a night at the Remand Yard prison in Port-of-Spain, on Wednesday.
Warner, in an interview with the Sunday Guardian, said his direct aim was at Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, even as his past association with football governing body, Fifa, could end up harming his own political career.
Warner has come out of his short prison stint swinging, telling the Sunday Guardian that his loyalty to Persad-Bissessar is over.
“I have nothing to lose anymore,” Warner said.
Warner has been the focus of widespread media reports since the US-based Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) arrested several high-ranking Fifa officials in Zurich, Switzerland, on Tuesday. Fourteen Fifa officials in total were held on corruption charges and criminal proceedings have opened relating to the award of the World Cups in 2018 to Russia and 2022 to Qatar.
Warner said the Prime Minister made “deliberate” attempts to embarrass him since his overnight detention, including reading out the list of charges against him into the Hansard records in Parliament on Wednesday.
“That was deliberate and totally unnecessary. Not once has the Prime Minister shown any reciprocity of the respect I had accorded her and even when I went to Parliament on Friday to add my explanation to the Hansard, I saw a minister trying to tell the House Speaker to shut me up,” Warner said.
“The time has come for me to stop being coy,” Warner said.
Since parting ways with the Government back in 2013 Warner had often threatened to reveal details of the inner workings of the Government under Persad-Bissessar, but always stopped short of actually disclosing the more salacious details he claimed to have on the People’s Partnership.
When asked why those details were only now being ventilated, Warner said despite the almost two-year fall out with the People’s Partnership, he still felt a sense of “collective responsibility” to the party.
“The Prime Minister, even after I left the Government, I felt no ill-will towards her. I felt that she was surrounded by people who did not have her best interest and she was taking bad advice so she still had my loyalty and my sense of collective responsibility. Now this no longer exists,” he said.
Back in 2013, Warner’s name was at the centre of allegations of financial mismanagement while president of Concacaf and vice-president of Fifa. He had already resigned from all football posts in 2011 amid revelations of a cash-for-votes bribery scandal involving fellow Fifa official Qatari billionaire Mohamed bin Hammam and members of the Caribbean Football Union, which Warner headed.
But while Persad-Bissessar had seemingly turned a deaf ear on previous calls for Warner’s dimissal, she could not ignore the Concacaf Integrity Committee’s detailed report in which Sir David Simmons presented findings with regards to allegations of million-dollar financial mismanagement by Warner and former Concacaf general secretary Chuck Blazer.
The committee met in Panama and returned with the findings that both Warner and Blazer were “white-collar thieves”.
Warner believes now that it is his previous hesitation that “lulled” Persad-Bissessar into a false sense of complacency.
“But I am very prepared to tell all now. In fact I have already handed over several documents to my lawyers and other lawyers that I trust just in case anything happens to me,” he said.
Warner said the reports of threats on his life were real and he had taken those precautionary steps.
Like many of his supporters, Warner is questioning the timing of the international raid and of his own arrest.
“It comes at a time when both Fifa and this country is facing an election and I think it is quite clear that I have been targeted by this Government because all of a sudden they are rushing to comply with the US,” he said.
“They are dancing a jig for a gif, rushing to be complicit with the same US they have been fighting in other extradition matters,” Warner said.
Warner scoffed at Persad-Bissessar’s claim that he did not contribute financially to her campaign.
“I have asked my accountant to pull together the documents; the proof is there,” he said.
Warner said he speaks with his two sons, Daryan and Daryl, every night and despite facing their own legal issues over this same Fifa matter, “they are in good spirits, they are OK.”