Cricket, Local News

Roberts implicates GFA in Warner, FIFA scandal

St. George’s, May 31, 2011 – A former Grenada national football player, who has served on the executive of the Grenada Football Association (GFA), has implicated the association in the money scandal that has resulted in the suspension of Jack Warner from FIFA, football’s world governing body.

Paul Roberts told local reporter Gennil Reuben that he had received $20,000 to buy equipment for a communications department that GFA planned on setting up. The idea, said Roberts, was that the facility would broadcast live GFA football games.

The allegations by Roberts will be aired as part of the Tuesday evening newscast on MTV, where Reuben works as a journalist and news anchor.

Warner, Minister of Works in the Trinidad & Tobago government, has been a FIFA vice-president, as well as president of CONCACAF and the Caribbean Football Union (CFU).

He has been provisionally suspended by FIFA while it investigates allegations that Warner worked with Mohamed Bin Hammam to bribe voters. Bin Hammam had been seeking the presidency of FIFA, but has since withdrawn from the race.

Incumbent Sepp Blatter is now the only candidate for president in the FIFA elections that are scheduled for Wednesday, June 1.

Warner and Bin Hammam have both denied accusations of offering cash bribes to national football associations at a specially convened meeting of the CFU on May 10 and 11 in Trinidad.

It is claimed that Warner, on behalf of Bin Hammam, offered members of the CFU US$40,000 in cash as a “gifts” and “development projects;’’ and that it was implied that the money was in return for votes in Bin Hammam’s presidential election.

Roberts said he knows of at least two GFA officials who attended the CFU meeting in Trinidad with Bin Hammam and Warner.

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