A list of financial mismanagement allegations against former Concacaf leaders Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer was outlined to officials of the confederation’s 40nations Wednesday, just minutes after they elected Jeffrey Webb as their new president. Officials from across Central American and the Caribbean turned on former general secretaryBlazer, the most senior American official in world soccer, and voted to seek his removal from FIFA’s Executive Committee after 16 years. FIFA will deal with the issue at its full Congress of 208countries on Friday.
”There are robbers with guns and there are robbers with white collars – and I don’t want us to be represented by a thief with a white collar in FIFA,” Cuba soccerpresident Luis Hernandez told Webb during his first meeting with delegates as president. Blazer did not attend the meeting that detailed an audit of Concacaf’s finances conductedafter he stepped down as the body’s top administrator in December.
Blazer’s 10 percent commissions on television and sponsorship deals, paid to an offshore company called Sportvertising,helped push Concacaf’s staff costs to $9 million from income of $38 million last year, according to the audit.
Blazer countered that he was ”not yet in litigation” with Concacaf torecover unpaid commissions, agreed by Warner since 1994. “I’m perfectly satisfied that I did an excellent job,” Blazer said. “I spent 21 years building the confederation and its competitions and itsrevenues, and I’m the one responsible for its good levels of income.”
The revelation of Warner’s legal ownership of a $22.5 million Concacaf center of excellence in his native Trinidadand Tobago stunned officials. They also learned that Warner and former Concacaf vice president Lisle Austin took out an unauthorized mortgage on the sprawling property in 2007.