THESE are turbulent times for the game of football. FIFA, which governs football worldwide, had its pretentious facade of lies and intricate web of deception shattered two days before its May 29 election when the United States and Swiss authorities arrested seven officials in a dawn raid in Zurich, Switzerland.
Football has known nothing but turmoil since then. Now, FIFA chiefs are singing. And the music is distasteful. It is obvious that FIFA has taken the liberty it enjoys to mean licentiousness. Crucially, a high percentage of those arrested and indicted in US courts are close allies of Sepp Blatter, who has been FIFA president since 1998. As a result, Blatter, who won a fifth presidential term on May 29 amid rancour, was forced to issue an abrupt notice of resignation four days later.
Most of the football world welcomed the gesture, calling for new elections and a deep-rooted change in the affairs of FIFA. But addressing this stinking house of football is an onerous task in a divided world. This is because some entities like Russia, Asian and African nations are not yet in agreement that FIFA is fundamentally corrupt. But it is something the whole world must unite to do before thieving administrators eternally damage the beautiful game.
At the heart of the festering scandal is a $10 million bribe South Africa allegedly paid to secure the rights to host the 2010 World Cup. The US prosecutors, working with the confessions of an ex-FIFA official, Chuck Blazer, said the money was taken in bags of $10,000 bills to a Paris hotel for onward transfer to Jack Warner, who has also been indicted for corruption in the US like Blazer. Warner resigned from FIFA in 2011 following allegations of corruption.
Another critical peg in the US probe is the way FIFA awarded the hosting rights for the 2018 and 2022 finals to Russia and Qatar respectively back in 2008. US investigators allege that the process was marred by bribery, a fact which Blazer seems to corroborate by his guilty plea.
In all, FIFA officials have reportedly accepted bribes and kickbacks in excess of $150 million, mainly for awarding the hosting rights for major tournaments. The scope of the allegations dates back to 24 years, the period before Blatter replaced Joao Havelange of Brazil as FIFA boss. The enquiry reaches across the world. Those already charged include Jeffrey Webb (Cayman Island), Eduardo Li (Costa Rica), Nicoláz Leoz (Paraguay), Julio Rocha (Nicaragua), Rafael Esquivel (Venezuela), Jose Maria Marin (current president of Brazil football), Costas Takkas (Britain) and Eugenio Figueredo (Uruguay).
Six others are facing money laundering and racketeering charges. Ricardo Texeira, a former head of the Brazil Football Federation and a son in-law to Havelange, has been fingered by Brazilian prosecutors for fraud, totalling $147.3 million. The offence was allegedly committed between 2009 and 2012 when he was forced to resign as head of the Brazil World Cup organising committee. Things can’t get murkier. A Nigerian, Amos Adamu, was banned for three years in 2010 for bribery. Adamu, a former Director of Sports, was found to have illegally received £6,341 in bribes. The Nigerian authorities did not prosecute him.
But the net of the investigators might still ensnare Blatter, the biggest fish of them all, and the current secretary-general, Frenchman Jerome Valcke. Blatter has spent 41 years working for FIFA. Warner, a political leader in Trinidad and Tobago, has threatened to tell it all and “spill an avalanche” of secrets detailing corruption in FIFA.
FIFA is a mammoth organisation, which reputedly has reserves worth $1.5 billion and revenue of $5.7 billion from 2011 to 2014. Under Blatter, 79, the organisation tried to lift football in Africa and Asia through the FIFA Goal Project. This has endeared Blatter to corrupt African and Asian football officials. However, the good news is that the enquiry might still unearth the crooked dealings of these officials, which will be a solid starting point of holistic reform.
But apparently, FIFA is enmeshed in a mazy pot of sleaze. Although France was granted the hosting rights for the 1998 World Cup, which it won, Moroccan officials allegedly paid bribes to switch the votes through Warner. In 2008, a court in Zug, indicted FIFA chiefs for the 2001 collapse of ISL, its marketing partner of two decades. In a detailed probe, ISL, which sold lucrative TV rights on behalf of FIFA, was indicted in a 228-page report for paying £45 million as kickbacks to FIFA officials. Despite the fact that some European football chiefs complained that FIFA was rotten, nothing concrete was done by the rest of the world to reform the football body.
Shortly after ISL’s collapse, FIFA overreached itself again when it sold the TV rights for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups for 26 territories in Asia to Infront Sports & Media, a Swiss company run since 2006 by Philippe Blatter, the nephew of the FIFA president. Infront had sold the TV rights for the 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014 finals. There are other fraudulent acts by FIFA but it beggars belief that Blatter allegedly bribed the Football Association of Ireland with €5 million when a 2010 World Cup playoff between France and Republic of Ireland descended into chaos.
In a testimony last week, John Delaney, the FAI boss, said Blatter agreed to pay Ireland to prevent it from taking legal action over Thierry Henry’s hand ball that led to the goal that stopped the Irish from qualifying for the World Cup in South Africa.
In a way, the world needs football. It is big business, giving employment and riches untold to downtrodden youths, who otherwise would have been irrelevant in life. Because of this, the world should do everything to save the game. If the allegations of bribery are proved, the World Cup hosting rights awarded to Russia and Qatar might come under scrutiny, and a reformed FIFA might be left with no choice but to re-award the hosting rights through a transparent process.
But before things can fall into place, all those who have soiled their hands should be prosecuted by every country concerned, and FIFA surgically restructured in line with global best practices. This will not amount to interference in the internal affairs of FIFA, as often cited by football administrators. Money laundering, bribery and fraud are actions that belong in the realm of criminal justice.
