PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (Trinidad Express) – Indicted football administrator and one of two of Interpol’s most wanted FIFA official, Jack Warner spent a significant portion of the US$10 million bribe he collected from South Africa on paying off credit card debt and a personal loan held in a Republic bank account in his name, according to a US law enforcement source.
More than half of the bribe money sent from FIFA’s UBS account in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2008 to three Warner controlled RBL accounts went towards what the US-issued indictment described as “scheme #1- Wire Fraud and Money Laundering”, or black market currency trade through legitimate Trinidad-owned businesses like the JTA Group and International Shipping Ltd (ISL), among others, sources with knowledge of the situation have disclosed.
Both business interests have confirmed, in separate and short interviews with the Sunday Express, that they unknowingly facilitated Warner’s money laundering by purchasing US dollar bank drafts from his personal accountant and main man of business, Kenny Rampersad.
Rampersad is a certified accountant with offices at 3A Queen’s Park West, Port of Spain, and was the beneficiary of all of the accounting briefs from four of the football bodies associated with Warner, including CONCACAF, the regional football body for North and Central America and the Caribbean and the CFU (Caribbean Football Union).
The US indictment, unsealed by a Brooklyn, New York, USA, court on May 27, in detailing the wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering charges against Warner, pointed to his decades- old use of business and other “intermediaries” to launder vast flows of corruptly received cash through currency trade transactions and financial structuring of the TTD repayments to a slew of Warner-controlled bank accounts.
The indictment did not identify Warner’s co-conspirators by name in the money laundering scheme but it cited “a Trinidadian businessman whose identity is known to the Grand Jury” and a large local “supermarket chain” and “real estate and investment company, “controlled by the unnamed businessman.
