Trinidad court blocks ex-Fifa vice-president’s extradition to US | OneFootball

The Trinidadian Jack Warner, former FIFA vice-president who faced a lifetime ban from football-related activities and is accused of corruption by the American Justice, which seeks to try him, will not be extradited to the United States, the courts of his country decided this Tuesday (23).

Warner was at the center of the corruption scandal that shook the world football's governing body in 2015, known as "Fifagate," which led to FBI arrests in Zurich, Switzerland, the prelude to proceedings against several sports officials, mostly Latin Americans.

"Warner was released," declared Judge Karen Reid of Trinidad and Tobago at the end of the hearing, announcing the "permanent" suspension of the extradition process.

The former official, 82, was released on bail of 370,000 dollars (R$ 1.96 million at the current exchange rate).

"Nothing can erase the pain and humiliation I felt over the last ten years, not to mention my arrest," Warner said in a brief statement to AFP.

The decision puts an end to a ten-year legal saga over the existence or not of an extradition agreement between the United States and the Caribbean archipelago, famous for its beaches and carnival.

Warner, a former member of the FIFA executive committee, voted in favor of granting Russia and Qatar the right to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Trinidad and Tobago qualified only once in its history for the World Cup, in 2006, when Warner was president of its football federation.

In November 2023, the sports official was ordered by his country's Justice to pay more than 220,000 dollars (R$ 1.16 million at the current exchange rate) to a Trinidadian businessman, in a case where Warner had promised to repay a loan from the businessman with a future FIFA grant.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.