FIFA CORRUPTION INVESTIGATION:LAYERS OF intrigue still surround what happened at the Zurich home of football's governing body, Fifa, yesterday, but the expected result was delivered.
Two of Fifa’s most senior executives, Mohamed Bin Hammam and Jack Warner, have been suspended, pending an investigation into extensive evidence that they offered bribes of $40,000 (€28,000) to 25 Caribbean football associations, in return for votes in favour of Bin Hammam as president of Fifa.
With the organisation reeling from a string of corruption allegations against 10 of the 24-man executive committee, Jerome Valcke, Fifa’s secretary general, admitted with grim understatement that Fifa’s reputation is: “Not at its highest.”
Pushed, he did agree that the report of $1 million (€700,000) in bribes being offered at a meeting in Trinidad this month should become a “watershed moment” for Fifa to reform.
Sepp Blatter, the 75-year-old Fifa president whom Bin Hammam was challenging, was cleared by the ethics committee of failing to report wrongdoing, having been informed that payments were being planned.
So, with his opponent suspended, Blatter is free to be re-elected unopposed, for a fourth term, on Wednesday. Valcke rejected suggestions the election should be postponed.
“Why?” he asked. “Because the media are trying to say we should? What has happened is perfectly clear.”
The significance of this most public of scandals is much greater than simply the shredded reputations of two Fifa executives, for allegedly doling out dollars in a Trinidad hotel room.
This manicured facade at Fifa, which made €900 million from selling the global rights to the World Cup, has now been shattered. The defining public perception, particularly following the award of the 2022 World Cup to the tiny desert state of Qatar, is that football’s governing body is tainted by corruption at the top.
Valcke acknowledged that “steps must be taken to ensure this cannot happen again,” and said that if Blatter is waved through as president on Wednesday, Blatter would oversee reform.
The alleged bribery was described by Petrus Demaseb, a Namibian lawyer, who chaired the ethics committee which decided to suspend Bin Hammam and Warner. Blatter said he had been approached by Warner, who told him Bin Hammam was planning to hold a meeting with members of the Caribbean Football Union at which payments would be offered.
Warner denied it. Blatter said he had told Warner he should not hold such a meeting.
Blatter was cleared of a possible charge of not reporting an offence – Demaseb’s reasoning was that no offence had taken place at that point, only planned.
The meeting went ahead, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Port-of-Spain, and afterwards seven Caribbean football associations turned whistleblower. They reported to another Fifa executive committee member, American Chuck Blazer, who actually works for Warner as general secretary of Concacaf [Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football], that the $40,000 payments were made.
Blazer’s role in the affair, turning the tables on Bin Hammam and Warner, is one of the intriguing inner plots.
Guardian Service
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