PORT OF SPAIN: Trinidad’s police service is seeking to sort out the confusion over whether former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner will, or will not, face further investigation over the infamous Mohamed Bin Hammam election conference a year ago.
Qatari Bin Hammam was then running for FIFA president. He withdrew after a scandal over envelopes containing $40,000 in cash ‘for expenses’ were paid to attending delegates from the Caribbean Football Union. Warner, the then president of both the CFU and CONCACAF, had organised the conference. He is currently Trinidad & Tobago’s Minister of Works and occasional stand-in Prime Minister.
Now the Police Service Commission has said it will be writing to Police Commissioner Dwayne Gibbs over conflicting statements made by Gibbs and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Roger Garpard.
In a statement issued after its monthly statutory meeting on Monday, the PSC said that the Police Service had every right to end any investigation against Warner. However it cautioned that the decision by Gibbs “would be viewed against the backdrop of the general efficiency and effectiveness of the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioners in managing investigations of alleged offences.”
The PSC that it would investigate “in the meantime” any alleged discrepancies in the Police Commissioner’s letter dated March 21, 2012 and the public statements of the DPP which appear to shed a different light. It added: “We shall be writing the Commissioner of Police on this matter.”
Last week, Gaspard told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that he had informed the police that based on the “thread bare information and material” submitted to him he could not determine that any law was broken. However he had suggested that further investigations might be justified over concerns about the non-declaration of monies brought into the country.
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