Former FA chairman accuses Fifa members

WORLD CUP 2018 CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS:LORD TRIESMAN, the former chairman of England's Football Association (FA), has reignited the row over allegations of corruption at the heart of football's governing body by accusing four leading members of Fifa of seeking bribes to back England's bid for the 2018 World Cup.

Triesman, the former chairman of England’s 2018 bid, told a parliamentary committee that four members of Fifa’s executive were guilty of “improper and unethical behaviour” in the early stages of the bid.

He accused controversial Concacaf president Jack Warner of asking for £2.5 million (€2.9m) to build a school and offices in Trinidad at a meeting in a London hotel in October 2009, intimating that the money should be paid directly through him.

Warner later requested £500,000 (€570,000) for a scheme to buy up World Cup TV rights and air the tournament on big screens for the islanders of Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake, claimed Triesman. Again, he was told the money should be routed through him.

“(Warner) believed that if he had the sum of half a million pounds sent to him he could secure those rights. I told him it was out of the question. Some time later it was put to me that he was actually the owner of those rights,” said Triesman.

Warner said the allegations made against him by Triesman were “a piece of nonsense”. “I’ve never asked Triesman nor any other person, Englishman or otherwise, for any money for my vote at any time,” he said.

Triesman, who was forced to stand down last May as the result of a newspaper sting, said that at another meeting, with Paraguayan Fifa executive Nicolas Leoz in Ascuncion, it was suggested that he secure him a knighthood in return for his vote.

Triesman said he was guided to a display cabinet in which there were copies of honours he had received and photos of streets named after him. Through a translator, Leoz, the head of South American football, told Triesman he didn’t want for cash, but a knighthood “would be appropriate”.

Later, Triesman said he met the longstanding head of the Brazilian football federation, Ricardo Teixeira, in Qatar. Speaking after Brazil had beaten England in a friendly, when Triesman said he was looking forward to meeting President Lula, he was told: “Lula is nothing. You come and tell me what you have for me.”

Teixeira and Leoz were both also named by the BBC Panorama documentary that went out on the eve of the World Cup vote as among those implicated in taking bribes from a sports marketing company in the 1990s.

Triesman claimed that a fourth approach was made during negotiations about England playing a friendly against Thailand with Fifa Exco member Worawi Makudi. Triesman said he insisted on acquiring the TV rights to the mooted game. “That was what he believed was the critical thing to making the arrangement a success.”

New evidence submitted to the committee by the Sunday Times from a whistleblower within Qatar’s successful campaign for the 2022 World Cup alleged two other Fifa executive committee members – Issa Hayatou of Cameroon and Jacques Anouma of the Ivory Coast – had accepted payments of $1.5 million (€1.05m) in return for their vote.

The revelations mean a third of Fifa’s 24 executive committee members have now been accused of impropriety in the run up to last year’s World Cup vote.

The MPs immediately called for a “full investigation” of the claims, with committee chairman John Whittingdale saying he would write to Fifa “as a matter of urgency”.

Triesman, who said he had waited until now to make the allegations so he could do so under parliamentary privilege, admitted he should have complained to Fifa at the time, but did not do so for fear of harming the bid.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter, launching a new taskforce in Zurich as part of his re-election campaign, claimed he was “shocked” by the new revelations.

“If this is true, I will fight this. I am fighting for Fifa to clean Fifa. I cannot answer for individual members of our committee. I cannot say if they are all angels or if they are all devils,” Blatter said.

England’s £18 million (€21m) campaign garnered a desultory two votes at the vote in Zurich on December 2nd last year.

Triesman accepted there were failings with the troubled campaign, which he only headed until his resignation in May, but said Fifa’s rationale to take it to new territories – and the pervading suspicion of corruption surrounding the bidding process – may have meant the prize was unwinnable.

Two other Fifa executive committee members, Oceania’s Reynald Temarii and the Nigerian Amos Adamu, and four other officials, were suspended last year in the wake of corruption allegations.

Guardian Service