PORT OF SPAIN: Disgraced former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has won the latest round in his legal fight to avoid being extradited from Trinidad to the United States writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

Warner has been indicted in the $150m FIFAGate corruption case which has rocked international football and brought about the downfall of a string of senior exectives, mainly in central and Latin America.

The 73-year-old was a major powerbroker within world federation FIFA years for two decades while he also led the central and north American confederation (CONCACAF) and its sometime subsidiary, the Caribbean Football Union.

Time is becoming an issue in the case being brought to court in the US by the Department of Justice. Prosecutors had hoped to bring those accused to trial at around the same time but it is now 13 months since the first detentions were undertaken, infamously, in Zurich in May last year.

Warner’s lawyers, who included noted UK counsel, are thought to consider that, as soon as verdicts are delivered against others who have been indicted, then they can claim that any action against Warner would have to be deemed prejudicial.

Hence an attempt by the US DoJ to become involved in the extradition action in Trinidad – which has now been rejected by the courts there.

Trinidad’s  Attorney General had approved the original extradition plea but Warner appealed on a string of grounds including an apparent contradictions in the laws affecting such applications.

Warner has been bailed on 12 counts related to racketeering, corruption and money laundering allegedly committed in the jurisdiction of the United States and Trinidad and Tobago, dating as far back as 1990.

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