So, rather predictably, there will be no “avalanche” of incriminating evidence against Fifa and Sepp Blatter from Jack Warner. The former Fifa vice-president said at the beginning of June that he would disclose secrets about the football governing body, adding that “not even death will stop the avalanche that is coming. The die is cast. There can be no turning back. Let the chips fall where they fall.”

By last weekend he had changed his tune somewhat. “If [Blatter] is down, I give him a helping hand but there are people in this country and outside who like to demonise people,” Warner told the Trinidad Express. “I am not like that and therefore don’t expect me to tell you anything about Blatter or Fifa. I am not like that.”

Was anyone surprised? I wasn’t. I had predicted this outcome in a column for Wired868 which explained the self‑interest behind his threat – a threat that was never going to lead to a real exposé.

Warner still plans to release a book within six months, entitled The Political Life of Jack Warner. “It’s going to be a bestseller,” said Warner, who is an MP in Trinidad and Tobago.

It is not hard to imagine his staunchest critics making advance orders, although fairly certain that they will be disappointed by the time they reach the epilogue.

It is almost five years since Warner took his leave from football in disgrace. Here was an administrator so crooked that even Fifa felt he made it look bad, at a time when corruption was all the rage. But he could never really divorce himself. No more than Paul McCartney could leave the Beatles behind.

Cut Warner and he probably bleeds brown envelopes, just waiting to be stuffed with US dollars. Maybe he sleeps with one stiff arm thrust upwards with palm exposed and on his lips the catchphrase: “What can you do for me?”

These days Warner has become such a farcical figure that he has literally taken to grappling with comedians and satirical publications.

“Everybody hates you now, I mean literally, everybody,” said the British comedian John Oliver during a five‑minute monologue that he paid to be aired on Trinidad and Tobago television. “I think it’s something to do with you seeming like an absolutely terrible human being. But if you turn on Fifa do not underestimate how much people might be willing to forgive and if one day you end up in jail and you’re staring up at the ceiling, wouldn’t you be happy to know you took some people down with you? It’s like they say: snitches gets smooches.”

Warner, barely a week after he mistook an article in The Onion, the American satirical website, for a straight news report, again seemed to drag his response wide of the mark. “I don’t need any advice from any comedian fool who doesn’t know anything about this country to tell me what files to release or what not to release,” said Warner in his retort, which was uploaded on YouTube. “That is none of his business and I take no instructions from him. And worse yet, I don’t take any instructions from an American [sic] at this point in time.”

Once upon a time a frequent traveller who was treated as a visiting dignitary in any of Fifa’s other 208 member associations, Warner cannot spot an English accent these days.

It has been a long way down for the administrator who once had Nelson Mandela defy doctors’ orders to travel to Trinidad. Mandela was the guest of honour at a charitable dinner held by Warner at the controversial João Havelange Centre of Excellence in 2004. But the Cyril Ross Home for Children with HIV/Aids said it never saw a cent of that money. Warner reportedly said expenditure for the event had exceeded income.

Haiti’s earthquake victims, according to the president of the country’s football association, Dr Yves Jean-Bart, received barely $60,000 of the $750,000 that Warner ostensibly raised from the South Korea Football Association and Fifa on their behalf in 2010.

The former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner visiting a low-income neighborhood in southern Trinidad in June – days after Fifa’s corruption scandal was exposed. Photograph: Andrea De Silva/Reuters

Such tales epitomise the real Warner: influential, greedy, heartless and completely devoid of shame. The question on your lips is not so much “why” as it is “how”? How did he get away with it? And how is it that such a man can hold a seat in his country’s parliament as the MP for Chaguanas West, which is a constituency of roughly 28,000 people?

The answer to that is straightforward: because we let him. And, by “we”, I’m not referring only to my compatriots in Trinidad and Tobago. There was little sophistication to the financial crimes that the US Department of Justice alleges were committed by Warner. Trinidad and Tobago’s financial intelligence unit, tasked since 2013 with unearthing money laundering, has never secured a single conviction. Warner denies any wrongdoing.

Austin Warner was born on 26 January 1943 in the rural village of Rio Claro in south Trinidad. He was the third of seven children to Wilton and Stella Warner, a truck driver and housewife respectively.

He was poor, but by Trinidadian standards. That means he did not miss too many meals, he owned school books and his family could afford to send him to school in Port of Spain, the capital, nearly an hour’s drive away. Media tales of Warner walking to school barefoot are a myth, although he probably did have tattered shoes.

Warner was a decent student at national level but never a brilliant one and he failed to get a national scholarship to the top secondary schools such as St Mary’s college and Queen’s Royal college. At the college of St Philip and St James, which later became Presentation college, Warner claimed a mathematics teacher once called him “jackass” as he fumbled in class. Students, who teased Warner often, rechristened him “Jack” and he used the slight as fuel to rise beyond their wildest dreams.

Warner was 21 when Trinidad and Tobago joined Fifa in time for an unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the World Cup in England in 1966. He was never any good with the ball at his feet but, at the age of 30, he became his FA’s youngest-ever general secretary.

By then Warner had come to grips with his real talent, which was bluster and politics. Months later, in 1974, the Brazilian Havelange, the man he proclaimed to be his mentor, replaced the Englishman, Sir Stanley Rous, as Fifa president.

Warner’s worth to Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean football is often overstated. The national football team were on the verge of a 1974 World Cup place and controversially finished second to Haiti, after losing 2-1 despite scoring five goals – four of which were disallowed – against the hosts in a qualifying tournament staged by the Haitians.

It was another 16 years before Trinidad and Tobago did nearly as well, as many of the islands’ overseas-based stars quit after clashes with Warner over unkept promises or ill-treatment.

On 19 November 1989 the Trinidad and Tobago coach Everald “Gally” Cummings, who was a key midfielder in 1973, swore that Warner created a scenario that made qualification for the 1990 World Cup almost impossible. The home team, nicknamed the Strike Squad, needed only a point against USA and were heavy favourites but everything about their matchday preparation was disastrous.

Trinidad and Tobago lost this World Cup qualifier against USA in 1989. Jack Warner had oversold tickets for the 22,000-seat stadium. Photograph: George Tiedemann/Corbis

Most famously, Warner grossly oversold tickets for the 22,000-seat National Stadium and approximately 35,000 fans squeezed into the venue while thousands more almost caused a riot outside. The Strike Squad, including an 18-year-old, Aston Villa-bound Dwight Yorke, had to be lifted over the mob by soldiers before kick-off in the biggest game of their lives.

United States won 1-0 and Trinidad and Tobago players and supporters wept openly. But Warner’s rapid rise in Fifa began. The following day, according to Warner’s authorised biography, he started his campaign for the Concacaf presidency with the help of the American administrator Chuck Blazer and, later, Havelange.

In Trinidad the government responded to public outrage over the game against the USA by opening a commission of inquiry into allegations of fraud over bogus match tickets and the endangerment of the lives of football fans. However, rather than sanction Warner, Havelange awarded Trinidad and Tobago a fair play award for the behaviour of fans. And Warner used that award and his promotion to the role of Concacaf president as proof he had done nothing wrong.

If the world was elevating him, he argued, then why should Trinidad and Tobago try to drag him back down? And wouldn’t the republic be embarrassing itself in the process?

All over the globe, he claimed, people were laughing at how those backward islands were mistreating a man of such obvious talents. The state’s commission of inquiry never officially ended but Justice Lionel Seemungal was starved of resources. The inquiry paused and was never resumed.

It was the closest Warner ever came to justice in his homeland.

Chuck Blazer, left, and Jack Warner are accused by US prosecutors of carving up more than $150m in bribes between themselves and their associates. Warner has always denied wrongdoing. Photograph: Wilfredo Lee/AP

What happened next, according to the United States attorney general, Loretta Lynch, is Warner and Blazer embarked on a racketeering spree of bribes and bid-rigging over the next two decades, carving up well over $150m in bribes between themselves and their associates.

Concacaf never held a single award ceremony in their 21-year reign to honour players such as Yorke, the former United States and Manchester City midfielder Claudio Reyna or the Mexico and Manchester United striker Javier Hernández. But Warner, a former history teacher, became a multimillionaire while Blazer infamously rented an apartment in Trump Tower for his cats.

Havelange gave Warner the World Cup’s television rights for the Caribbean at the price of only $1 in 1998, supposedly to raise money for the Caribbean Football Union (CFU). But when Warner left Fifa in 2011, the CFU did not even have the funds to hold an AGM.

The Trinidad and Tobago FA was also more than $7m in debt and its financial documents suggested that millions of dollars of sponsorship money and Fifa aid were diverted into Warner‑owned accounts and businesses. And the Caribbean, which provided half of Concacaf’s top six teams in the 1974 World Cup qualifiers, with Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago and the Netherlands Antilles in first, second and sixth place respectively, became the confederation’s whipping boys after the formation of the CFU.

Jack Warner leaves the Arouca police station in East Trinidad on 15 June. Photograph: Andrea de Silva/Reuters

Although Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica qualified once each – thanks to expanded World Cup tournaments – the Caribbean teams became largely also‑rans on the football field, even as their administrators grew richer every year.

Fifa did not only turn a blind eye. The South Africa 2010 World Cup’s local organising committee’s $10m payment, through the global body to Warner’s phantom Diaspora Legacy Programme, suggested the Trinidadian found willing accomplices in Fifa’s executive committee, who allowed the misuse of funds ostensibly meant to develop the Caribbean. South Africa’s government and football federation have denied the payment was a bribe.

The money, according to the US indictment, was funnelled to Warner’s Republic Bank accounts in Trinidad in three tranches from Fifa, via a Bank of America account in New York.

From the largesse, a Trinidad Express investigation claimed, Warner laundered more than $5m through unwitting, legitimate Trinidad-owned businesses including JTA Group and International Shipping Limited (ISL). The JTA Group, ISL and Warner shared the same accounting firm that sometimes did Concacaf’s and the Trinidad and Tobago FA’s books.

Carl Mack, owner and director of the JTA Group, told the Trinidad Express that foreign currency purchases had been made from Warner by the accounting firm and the requisite source of funds declarations were made in each case.

ISL’s financial controller, Rishi‑Nirvan Balroop, said the company had bought US dollars, dealing only with the same accountants, and added: “At no point was ISL ever in a position to investigate or suspect the source of these funds and we discharged our responsibilities in accordance with industry norms and standards.”

Warner reportedly used more than $2m to clear off credit card debts and another $236,000 to repay a loan. The rest was funnelled through several Warner-owned companies and accounts.

The US indictments state Warner promised Blazer a $1m cut but paid him only $750,000. There was never a surfeit of honour within this bunch of goodfellas.

How many other nations danced to Warner’s crooked tune and helped him to keep his credit cards plump?

David Beckham and Jack Warner speak to the media at the launch of the David Beckham Academy at Marvin Lee Stadium in Macoya in September 2010. Photograph: Andrea De Silva/Reuters

Five years ago England’s 2018 World Cup bid team seemed to get uncomfortable when I asked for the cost of their six-day football camp at the Centre of Excellence in Trinidad.

“That is for David Beckham to answer,” said the bid team’s chief executive, Andy Anson, before promptly ending his media chat. “The cost is irrelevant,” said Phil Mepham, the media coordinator for the 2018 bid. “We are not getting into that.”

“I don’t know how much it costs but as long as the kids are happy,” said Beckham. “Hopefully if we do get the World Cup, it would continue.”

Fifa’s rules of conduct at the time forbade bidding teams from not only monetary gifts but also “any benefit, opportunity, promise, remuneration or service to any of such individuals, in connection with the bidding process”. It might have been worse for England, of course. Warner initially asked the FA’s bid team to send the Queen.

In Trinidad, Warner’s fortunes, by then, seemed hopelessly intermingled with some of society’s most influential figures. This is unsurprising when you consider that one man was allegedly laundering millions of dollars into a country with the population of Birmingham.

“Mr Warner has been a friend of mine for many years,” Joseph Harris told the Trinidad Newsday. “I have never been a fair-weather friend … As a Catholic and a Christian you have to follow the example of Jesus Christ.”

Joseph Harris, in case you are wondering, is Trinidad and Tobago’s Roman Catholic archbishop.

“Mr Warner may have donated money to individual parishes and I cannot keep tabs on all of that,” said Harris. “I suppose he did … I don’t know that it was tainted money that he gave to the church. We do not go behind every donation.”

Fortunately, the US Department of Justice appears not to be as nonchalant about dirty money. In truth, many people in Trinidad are happy for the US to take a problem off their hands, one that they lack the stomach to address themselves. But then the same could possibly be said of football nations who hope the FBI may somehow fix Fifa for them.