Warner sues TTFA for $15.7m

Port of Spain, Trinidad, July 31, 2019 (Trinidad and Tobago Guardian): For­mer FIFA vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er has sued the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) over al­most $16 mil­lion in loans he claims he pro­vid­ed to the or­gan­i­sa­tion while at its helm.

In the law­suit, filed in the Port-of-Spain High Court on Mon­day, Warn­er is al­leg­ing the TTFA failed to re­pay the loans de­spite ac­knowl­edg­ing them sev­er­al times in the past.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, which were ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia Sports, Warn­er claims he pro­vid­ed the loans, to­talling $15,761,003, over 15 years. The mon­ey was al­leged­ly used to cov­er the as­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­pens­es, in­clud­ing the suc­cess­ful 2006 World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign.

Warn­er claimed the TTFA nev­er dis­put­ed its debt to him, as it was re­flect­ed in its fi­nan­cial state­ments be­tween 2007 and 2012. He in­clud­ed cor­re­spon­dence from for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee, who wrote to him to ac­knowl­edge the debt and as­sured him it would be cleared af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion im­proved.

While Warn­er claimed he at­tempt­ed to get Tim Kee to com­mit to a pay­ment plan in 2015, no as­sur­ances were giv­en. How­ev­er, the debt was even­tu­al­ly writ­ten off in the as­so­ci­a­tion’s 2015 fi­nan­cial state­ments, as it was claimed the debt was statute-barred and it had no oblig­a­tion to pay.

“These ac­counts were pub­lished af­ter the date of both let­ters from pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee, who had on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions ac­knowl­edged the debt to the claimant…At no time did the claimant in­form the de­fen­dant that they were no longer un­der an oblig­a­tion to re­pay the debt,” Warn­er’s doc­u­ments stat­ed.

Through the law­suit, Warn­er is seek­ing re­pay­ment of the mon­ey ad­vanced, plus in­ter­est cal­cu­lat­ed us­ing a prime com­mer­cial lend­ing rate.

In the event Warn­er even­tu­al­ly suc­ceeds in his law­suit it would put the as­so­ci­a­tion in an even more pre­car­i­ous fi­nan­cial po­si­tion, as over the past few years it has been swamped by le­gal dis­putes from na­tion­al play­ers and for­mer tech­ni­cal staff.

Warn­er is no stranger to the courts, as he is cur­rent­ly fight­ing his ex­tra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States to face charges aris­ing out of a US De­part­ment of Jus­tice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to cor­rup­tion in FI­FA.

Last month, US Dis­trict Court Judge William Kuntz en­tered a de­fault judge­ment against Warn­er in a US$20 mil­lion em­bez­zle­ment case which CON­CA­CAF brought against him and for­mer ex­ec­u­tive Chuck Blaz­er. Kuntz’s de­ci­sion was based on the fact that Warn­er had failed to reg­is­ter an ap­pear­ance in the case through an at­tor­ney.

CON­CA­CAF has al­so brought a US$37.8 mil­lion law­suit against Warn­er, his wife, ac­coun­tant and two com­pa­nies over own­er­ship of the Dr Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya. In that case, CON­CA­CAF is al­leg­ing that de­spite pro­vid­ing the funds for the project, the fa­cil­i­ty re­mained un­der one of Warn­er’s com­pa­nies.

The case is still be­ing heard by High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed, who is cur­rent­ly mulling over an ap­pli­ca­tion to have Warn­er’s wife and the com­pa­nies re­moved from the case be­fore it goes to tri­al.

Warn­er is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Rekha Ramjit and Alvin Pariags­ingh.