Monday, June 1, 2015

Is This the $10 Million Bribe to Jack Warner?

UPDATE June 2: The answer to the question posed in the title of this post appears to be ... No. See Martyn Ziegler here.

One of the schemes alleged by the US DOJ  (#7 - the 2010 FIFA World Cup Vote Scheme) claims (and now apparently confirmed from South Africa) that in 2008 FIFA sent $10 million of South Africa's FIFA funds to host the 2010 World Cup to Jack Warner, as a follow up payment in exchange for his 2004 vote for South Africa to host the event.

I was curious about whether that money could be identified on the CONCACAF end. With a hat tip to @mjstainbank here is a candidate for those funds on the CONCACAF end:
CONCACAF President Jack Warner was ecstatic after FIFA, the governing body of world football, issued a US$10m grant to CONCACAF, the group of football-playing countries of which Warner is president.

When contacted in Zurich yesterday, an elated Warner said: "This is a dream come true for 11 of our member countries. It will surely help to lift the bar of football in these countries. My sincere hope is that the governments and business organisations join with us in this FIFA initiative that will take the sport to even greater heights".

The FIFA funds will go into the "WIN in CONCACAF with CONCACAF" programme which was devised by FIFA in conjunction with CONCACAF and was agreed yesterday. The new development programme will see US$10 million invested in North and Central American and Caribbean football programmes over the next two years. The funding has been tailored to meet the specific needs of individual member countries, and will help develop the infrastructure in the first division leagues of Barbados, Belize, El Salvador, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. 
The news article is June 2009, so one year after the transfers were made from the South Africa FA via FIFA. No mention is made of any South Africa connection, nor the the CFU mentioned, which was also identified as a recipient of the FIFA transfer by the DOJ.

The $10 million grant also shows up in a 2013 FIFA press release (in bold below):
Between 1999 – the year in which the FAP and the Goal programme started – and 2012, FIFA has invested USD $260,099,659 in football development in the CONCACAF region. While USD $186,750,000 corresponded to FAP funds, and USD $39,100,000 were invested in Goal projects, additional resources were transferred through adidas Goal balls in CONCACAF (USD $1,667,255), courses (USD $15,900,000), Win in CONCACAF with CONCACAF (USD $10,000,000), humanitarian support funds (USD $5,041,732), and PERFORMANCE (USD $1,640,672).
With more than $260M being transferred from FIFA to CONCACAF, there is plenty of space to hide $10 million.

But the question is ... is this the same $10 million?

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