AFTER the excitements of the previous week, when Switzerland’s attorney-general announced that FIFA’s limpet-like president, Sepp Blatter, was under formal investigation for two instances of “criminal mismanagement and misappropriation”, it has been a quiet few days at the Zurich headquarters of football’s world governing body. Passing almost unnoticed was the decision on September 29th by FIFA’s hard-working ethics committee to ban a Blatter crony, Jack Warner, a former vice-president of the organisation, from the sport for life.
Nobody, including Mr Warner, much cared. He has other things to worry about, not least fighting extradition from his native Trinidad to the United States. There he is under investigation by the Department of Justice for being a central figure in the corruption that has been endemic at FIFA for at least the past two decades. Mr Warner is at the heart of one of the charges levelled at Mr Blatter: the allegation that in 2005 FIFA sold the Caribbean television rights to the Caribbean Football Union controlled by Mr Warner for $ 600,000, only for the rights to be sold on to a Jamaican broadcaster for $ 20m through a Warner-…
