Johnny Watterson: Fearless Andrew Jennings met powerful sports corporations head on

In Andrew Jennings' 1992 book on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) written with Vyv Simson, the captions on the photographs reflect something of Jennings himself, undaunted and to the point.

Not dissuaded by threats or intimidation, Jennings spoke in a language far removed from the diplomatic terms traditionally used to describe the ‘strong’ men of sport.

The 78-year-old, who died last Saturday from an aortic aneurysm, was one of the last Big Game hunters of investigative sports journalism.

Throughout a long career he did little other than try to become a stone in a shoe. The bigger the owner of the shoe, the more successful he believed he was doing his job. He was hugely successful at becoming that small but debilitating impediment.

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Picture number 12 in his seminal work 'The Lords of the Rings - power, money and drugs in the modern Olympics' reads: "IOC president Samaranch honours Romanian President Nicolae Ceaucescu, the Butcher of Bucharest."

Picture number 13 is equally indiscreet. The former Spanish IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch was an enthusiastic General Franco supporter. Franco was not averse to the clichéd dictator's mass grave set piece as he rose to power and ruled Spain.

“Samaranch, in the Fascist Blue Shirt and white jacket of the ‘Moviemiento’, is watched by General Franco as he is sworn in as national councillor,” read the caption, both of them, through Jenning’s prism, illustrating the IOC’s acceptance of vile regimes.

On publication of Lords of the Rings Jennings was rewarded with a five-day suspended jail sentence in the court of Canton de Vaud in Lausanne for defamation of the IOC, and was banned from IOC events.

The basis for Jennings's abrasive and fearless persona was that he uncovered paper trails to back up his allegations

Truthfully he was never interested in attending those events for their sports value. He was much more drawn to issues such as the abuse of power and corruption by a small number of people in previously untouchable bodies such as the IOC and Fifa. He was interested in people like the former heads of Fifa Sep Blatter, president from 1998-2015, and Joel Havalange, president from 1974-98 as well as the IOC's Samaranch.

Jennings pushed harder than any other journalist and the fact that he was despised by those in power was read by him as recognition of being successful in what he was pursuing.

Criminal enterprises

A typical Jennings conversation would be about the documents he had uncovered on named officials in the IOC or Fifa and how they were involved in what he called criminal enterprises. Often he was in the middle of a court case. It didn’t seem to cause him anxiety.

In subsequent meetings with The Irish Times sports editor after talking to Jennings, the conversation invariably ran along the lines of . . . seriously interesting stuff but if we ever printed any of the best stories, the certain defamation claims would close down the paper. Of course some of it was printed.

“Sports reporters,” Jennings said, “they are not cut out for the kind of work that is required here.”

For those targeted individuals in the major sports bodies Jennings used the language of ‘thieves’ and ‘organised crime syndicates’. Those words came from a previous life working as a reporter for the BBC.

Although he was born in Kirkcaldy in Scotland, he grew up in London and prior to his immersion in sport, he spent years investigating corruption inside Scotland Yard's Flying Squad.

His examination of the police turned out to be the perfect kind of undergraduate degree for a postgraduate career tackling monolithic sports lawyers and politicians, seemingly bullet proof to any kind of probing.

It was Jennings’ work that was part of the basis for a 2015 investigation conducted by the USA’s FBI, in which the US department of justice served a 47-count criminal indictment on nine Fifa executives and five business affiliates for racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud.

Included was the alleged use of bribery and money laundering to corrupt in the issuing of media and marketing rights for Fifa games in the Americas. An estimated $150 million, including at least $110 million in bribes, related to the Copa America Centenario to be hosted in 2016 in the United States.

Paper trails

Following the arrests Jennings typically deviated from diplomatic language. “These scum have stolen the people’s sport. They’ve stolen it, the cynical thieving bastards,” he told The Washington Post in 2015.

The basis for Jennings’ abrasive and fearless persona was that he uncovered paper trails to back up his allegations. His confidence and willingness to meet powerful sports corporations head on came from leg work and nit picking through documents. He liked the stage too.

When Blatter was Fifa president in 2002, Jennings turned up to a press conference at its headquarters in Zurich with a simple question. 'Herr Blatter. Have you ever taken a bribe?' "

The reasoning was not to gratuitously cause Blatter discomfort but message the decent majority in football that someone was prepared to face the corruption and he was that someone.

Fuelled by a shock of white hair and an endearing maverick spirit, Jennings wrote a number of books on the IOC and Fifa including the 2006 ‘Foul! The Secret World of Fifa: Bribes Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals.’

That same year he repeated the allegation of “cynical thieving bastards” on BBC current affairs program Panorama, all the time drawing the ire of fire fighting corporate lawyers.

He will be remembered for that. It may comfort him that for a few decades he achieved much more than making the comfortable deeply uncomfortable.