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Jack Warner made £11m profit on FIFA TV rights, according to claims

Jack Warner
Image: Jack Warner is facing fresh claims over his conduct

Disgraced former FIFA official Jack Warner made a profit of around £11m on World Cup TV rights that Sepp Blatter sold him for a fraction of their true value, investigations have revealed.

Swiss TV channel SRF has published a contract that Blatter signed off in 2005 for the broadcast rights for South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014 to be sold to the Warner-controlled Caribbean Football Union (CFU) for 600,000 US dollars (£389,000).

Investigations by Press Association Sport have shown that Warner, at that time CFU's president, sub-licensed those rights to his own Cayman Islands-registered company J & D International (JDI).

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 US dollars.

The revelations highlight the questionable relationship between the outgoing FIFA president Blatter and Warner, his one-time backer and Caribbean power-broker.

Jeffrey Webb: One of the FIFA officials arrested
Image: Jeffrey Webb: One of the FIFA officials arrested

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 United States.

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FIFA's deal with the CFU included an agreement for a 50 per cent share of any profits from sub-contracting the rights but few if any payments from profit share were ever made by Warner and in July 2011, a month after he resigned from FIFA following bribery allegations, FIFA terminated its contract with the CFU.

In 1998 Warner was awarded the 2002 World Cup TV rights for Trinidad and Tobago for just one dollar, a practice that had begun under Blatter's predecessor Joao Havelange.

Warner's JDI also sold the 2006 World Cup rights to the Caribbean for 4.25m dollars in 2001.

Sepp Blatter speaks during a press conference at the Extraordinary FIFA Executive Committee Meeting
Image: Sepp Blatter speaks during a press conference at the extraordinary FIFA executive committee meeting

Warner is currently fighting extradition from Trinidad to the USA where he has been indicted by the US justice department on football-related corruption charges.

At a joint news conference on Monday, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber are due to provide updates on the two separate criminal proceedings being carried out in each country.

The Swiss proceedings relate to the allocation of the World Cup tournaments in 2018 and 2022, and the American criminal proceedings focus on the allocation of media, marketing and sponsoring rights for football tournaments carried out in the United States and Latin America.

Follow the news conference on Sky Sports News HQ on Monday. 

Webb is currently on bail in New York, as is former FIFA member Chuck Blazer who has admitted to taking a share of a 10m dollar bribe to vote for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup.

Chuck Blazer FIFA
Image: Former FIFA official Chuck Blazer

The Swiss SRF channel published a contract signed by Blatter showing the TV rights for the 2010 World Cup had been sold for 250,000 US dollars and the 2014 tournament for 350,000 dollars to the Warner-controlled CFU.

FIFA responded by issuing a statement saying: "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 per cent 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."

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