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Thu, Mar

Jack Warner outside Port of Spain Magistrates' court
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Sepp Blatter is under renewed pressure after it emerged he awarded World Cup television rights for a fraction of their true value to Jack Warner, on which the disgraced former Fifa executive then made an £11m profit.

The publication of a contract bearing the outgoing Fifa president’s signature draws him closer into the web of continuing investigations and further calls into question his links with Warner, who served on the executive committee of world football’s governing body for 28 years.

The latest revelation emerged after Swiss broadcaster SRF uncovered a 2005 contract in which the Warner-controlled Caribbean Football Union were sold the broadcast rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups for $600,000. The Trinidadian, at that time CFU’s president, sub-licensed those rights to his own Cayman Islands-registered company J & D International (JDI), according to the Press Association.

In 2007, JDI sold on the rights to Jamaica-based cable TV station SportsMax for a value that the broadcaster reported on its own website as being between $18m and $20m.

Jaimie Fuller, of campaign group NewFifaNow, estimated that Warner had bought the contracts for only 5% of their true value. “Blatter sits atop an organisation riddled with corrupt deals, not dissimilar to this latest example and this further stresses the need for reform to be taken out of the hands of Fifa and the sports administration families,” he said.

“The current farce, with former IOC secretary general François Carrard chairing a supposed reform commission comprised of confederation appointees, is just another bad joke, another pathetic attempt to pull the wool over every football lover’s eyes.”

It was not the first time Fifa had sold TV rights to Warner, one of nine current of former Fifa officials charged by the US in May and currently fighting extradition from his native Trinidad, for a knockdown price.

In 1998 he was awarded the 2002 World Cup TV rights for Trinidad and Tobago for only one dollar, a practice that had begun under Blatter’s predecessor João Havelange. Warner’s JDI also sold the 2006 World Cup rights to the Caribbean for $4.25m in 2001.

According to court documents in the Cayman Islands, Jeffrey Webb – Warner’s successor as president of the Concacaf confederation – was a director of JDI at the time of the deal. Both Webb and Warner are facing corruption charges in the US. Webb was extradited to the US in the wake of the dramatic raids on Zurich’s Baur au Lac hotel in May and is currently on bail in New York.

Chuck Blazer, the former Fifa executive and Cocacaf general secretary who has admitted to taking a share of a $10m bribe to vote for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup and agreed to a plea bargain with prosecutors, also remains on bail.

Fifa’s deal with the CFU included an agreement for a 50% share of any profits from sub-contracting the rights but few if any payments from profit share were ever made by Warner.

In July 2011, a month after he resigned from Fifa following bribery allegations, Fifa terminated its contract with the CFU.

There is a long list of allegations linking Warner to making money from TV contracts and tickets on the back of his Fifa contacts and influence. Warner controlled an influential bloc of votes that repeatedly helped deliver Blatter re-election.

After quitting Fifa under a cloud of bribery allegations, Warner himself said in a statement that he bought World Cup TV rights for Trinidad for only one dollar in 1998 via a Mexican company and also acquired them for the 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014 editions. He said then that he used the revenue from selling on the rights to develop the sport in the Caribbean.

The publication of the contract bearing Blatter’s signature will increase the pressure on the 79-year-old as he prepares to step aside in February next year. On Monday in Zurich, US attorney general Loretta Lynch will give an update on the American investigation that labelled the actions of Fifa officials and TV marketing executives a “World Cup of fraud” over many years.

Lynch will speak alongside the Swiss attorney general Michael Lauber, who is overseeing a parallel investigation into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively and has identified 103 suspicious transactions involving Swiss banks.

The SRF programme published a contract signed by Blatter showing the TV rights for the 2010 World Cup had been sold for $250,000 and the 2014 tournament for $350,000 to the Warner-controlled CFU. Fifa responded by issuing a statement that read: “On 12 September 2005, Fifa signed a contract with the Caribbean Football Union regarding TV broadcasting rights. Under the terms of this agreement Fifa was to receive a fixed licensing fee as well as a 50% share of any profits related to the subcontracting of these rights.

“The CFU made several breaches to the contract and failed to meet its financial obligations. The obligations concerning the required pre-approval for subcontracting were not met either.

“For these reasons, Fifa terminated its contract with the CFU on 25 July 2011.”