FIFA Asks Caribbean Unions for Bribery Evidence

Despite having already found Mohammad Bin Hammam guilty of offering bribes, FIFA are still accumulating evidence on his crime.

To that end, they have asked all 24 members of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) who attended that now infamous May meeting in Trinidad for evidence relating to events at the meeting.

Cuba was the sole non-attendee of the CFU’s 25 members.

It was on May 10/11 in Port of Spain, that Bin Hammam in cahoots with Jack Warner, offered bribes of $40, 000 cash in envelopes to delegates to cast their votes for him, in his presidential election race with Sepp Blatter.

In today’s statement, FIFA added that “any person who has information” but does not comply with its corruption investigation will face sanctions.

Quite why they are still gathering evidence after convicting Hammam is difficult to fathom.

They are not looking for further people to blame because they have offered a partial amnesty to anyone who fesses up:

“FIFA has sent a letter on 25 July to all CFU associations, asking the associations, their presidents, and any of their members with knowledge of anything that transpired during the meetings held on 10 and 11 May in Trinidad and Tobago, to provide and report all relevant information in their possession within 48 hours.

Truthful and complete reporting will be considered in mitigation by the ethics committee when deciding on potential sanctions.

Any person who has relevant information but does not come forward during this 48-hour period will be subject to the full range of sanctions.

Following this 48-hour period, the ethics committee will be asked to open the necessary ethics proceedings.”

It seems like FIFA is asking the guilty delegates to choose between potential sanctions with mitigation for owning up if they admit guilt, or a ban if they stay silent.

Most likely, the move is aimed at encouraging the delegates to implicate each other.

Of the 25 CFU associations, nine have already admitted being offered bribes:

Aruba, Bahamas, Bermuda , Cayman Islands, Curaçao, Grenada, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Turks and Caicos Islands.

The fifteen remaining are divided between two groups.

One consist of the eleven associations who denied being offered gifts:

Barbados, Guyana, British Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago and United States Virgin Islands

Then there are the four associations who did not respond:

Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Montserrat

There will now be heavy pressure on them to disclose all that went on at that meeting despite the fact Bin Hammam has been banned for life, and Jack Warner retired to avoid the inevitable consequences of further investigation into his activities.