A committee of MPs has heard claims League Championship side Cardiff City Manager Neil Warnock "made players pay to be selected for games," according to the BBC. The claims were made in tweets -- later deleted -- by Jason Puncheon, who played for Warnock in '14 at Crystal Palace. They were raised on Monday by Parliamentary Culture, Media & Sport Committee Chair Damian Collins at a "hearing on football governance." The FA fined Puncheon. Collins was questioning FA Chair Greg Clarke and Dir of Strategy Robert Sullivan. He was speaking "using parliamentary privilege, which allows politicians to raise allegations without fear of legal redress." Clarke was asked why the FA "had not contacted Puncheon to ask him why he made the comments, rather than fining him." Sullivan, who was also giving evidence, said that no action had been taken because there has been no "hard evidence." Puncheon was fined £15,000 ($18,300) by the FA and apologized for his comments (BBC, 10/17). SKY SPORTS reported Warnock has denied Puncheon's allegations that he requested payments to pick players. Warnock: "These allegations are completely and utterly false. The FA Commission considered all of the evidence in detail in 2014 and it found that the allegations which were published about me were unfounded. Any suggestion that the FA failed to investigate this matter is simply untrue. In fact, Mr. Puncheon apologized to me and removed the allegations from his Twitter account. ... I am disappointed that these allegations have been repeated after Mr. Puncheon's apology and after the FA investigated fully" (SKY SPORTS, 10/17).
COMMON PROBLEM: The PA reported Sullivan said, "Where the line is difficult to draw is bringing forward real evidence that can actually be used to take an investigation forward. There are comments made on social media and there is actual hard evidence that the investigators can actually use to bring forward a case and a charge." Clarke explained that this was a "common problem for the FA's 33-strong team of compliance officers and investigators," and denied the failure to successfully prosecute charges was "a result of any lack of interest in tackling corruption." Clarke: "There's a surfeit of people who say Fred or Mary is a villain. You then talk to Fred or Mary and they deny it and there's no third-party corroboration, no paper trail. So we focus on the cases where we can find that evidence" (PA, 10/17).
