Ex-Fifa chief Warner cries foul over lifetime ban from football

More than four years after quitting Fifa, Warner has found himself banned from football for life by Fifa’s ethics committee and described as a “key player” involved in illegal payments.

Warner has claimed there has been an attempt to distract from the investigations into Fifa president Blatter and Uefa president Michel Platini, who are themselves under scrutiny from the ethics committee.

Warner said: “I left Fifa in April 2011 and if in September 2015 Fifa wants to ban me for life without even a hearing then so be it. I do not believe however that this will serve as the distraction to Fifa’s present problems as Fifa wishes it to be.

“Given what is happening in Zurich with Blatter I wish to say that there is no such thing as coincidence.”

Last Friday the Swiss attorney general opened criminal proceedings against Blatter, probing a £1.3m payment to Platini and television rights deals with Warner.

Platini and Blatter both issued statements on Monday denying any wrongdoing and insisted the payment of 2m Swiss francs to Platini was legitimate despite it coming more than nine years after the Frenchman had worked for Fifa.

Warner, who is fighting extradition from Trinidad to the USA on corruption charges, resigned from Fifa in June 2011 following a bribery scandal and has not been involved since then. Initially Fifa said it had no power to take action against him as he had resigned with “the presumption of innocence”.

However, Fifa’s ethics committee reopened an investigation into Warner earlier this year and has now issued the ban.

A statement from the ethics committee yesterday said: “Mr Warner was found to have committed many and various acts of misconduct continuously and repeatedly during his time as an official in different high-ranking and influential positions at Fifa and Conacaf.

“In his positions as a football official, he was a key player in schemes involving the offer, acceptance and receipt of undisclosed and illegal payments, as well as other money-making schemes.”

The decision was taken on the basis of investigations carried out by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee following its report on the inquiry into the 2018/2022 World Cup bidding process – the Garcia report into the bidding process identified Warner as having received or asked for money, often in the form of development money, from bidders.

Chung Mong-Joon, the Korean who is running against Michel Platini for the presidency, said Fifa is in “total meltdown” and needs to set up an emergency task force to run the organisation until a successor to Blatter is elected.

Chung said: “The 2018 World Cup qualifying matches continue to be held. Many football development programs continue to be implemented. However, Fifa that should be overseeing all this is in a total meltdown.”

He called for extraordinary sessions of Fifa executive committees to be held.