FIFA's jury of 12 hold key to growing legal storm

Sunday May 29 2011

The 12 members of FIFA's ethics committee will tonight deliver a verdict that could decide the future of football's governing body, amid growing calls for fundamental reform and fresh criticism from politicians and major sponsors.

As the 208 member nations gather in Zurich to choose FIFA's president for the next four years, there is growing pressure for the election to be suspended, given that both candidates, the incumbent Sepp Blatter and Mohamed Bin Hammam, face serious corruption allegations.

The British sports minister Hugh Robertson is to speak with foreign counterparts in an effort to form a consensus that action needs to be taken to reform FIFA. Robertson feels the current crisis could be FIFA's "Salt Lake City moment", referring to the bribery scandal that forced the International Olympic Committee into reform in 1999.

While Blatter's supporters believe he will claim a fourth term as president on Wednesday, many believe he has underestimated the strength of feeling outside the FIFA bubble.

"This happens to people when they do jobs for too long. They live in an ivory tower and lose any connection with the world outside. They probably think people will dismiss this, without realising how serious it is," said Robertson.

Much will depend on the outcome of today's deliberations by the ethics committee, which could suspend either or both men. Alternatively, it could provisionally suspend both Blatter and Bin Hammam while it deliberates further.

Blatter, whose 13-year tenure at the top of world football has been marked by recurrent scandal, became the tenth of its 24 executive committee members to face corruption allegations last Friday.

His opponent, Bin Hammam, who is charged with attempting to buy votes in Wednesday's election, has claimed that payments made to Caribbean Football Union officials were for legitimate expenses and that Blatter knew all about them, having been told by Jack Warner.

It was Warner, who has held a powerful position in FIFA for 28 years by virtue of controlling Concacaf's bloc of 35 votes, who arranged Bin Hammam's special conference with 25 voting members of the CFU on May 10-11, at which bundles of $40,000 in cash are alleged to have been distributed. The claims are documented in a dossier collated by John Collins, a Chicago attorney who was asked to investigate by Concacaf general secretary and FIFA executive committee member Chuck Blazer when he was approached by concerned CFU members.

Bin Hammam, a Qatari who has spent 15 years on FIFA's executive committee, claims the allegations are a plot to undermine his chances in the election, and accuses Blatter of a "tawdry manoeuvre" amid "increasing evidence of a conspiracy". For his part, Blatter insists he knew nothing of the allegations until he landed from a trip to Japan on Wednesday morning and has hit out at his detractors in the media.

Last week's events have shown the folly of the continued insistence from both men that they will overhaul FIFA's tarnished image. They were once close, with Bin Hammam helping Blatter to victory in the 1998 and 2002 elections, but they fell out when Bin Hammam felt Blatter had reneged on a promise to stand down this year.

Blatter is likely to dismiss calls for reform from Britain, Australia and the US as sour grapes over their World Cup bid humiliations, and will take heart from the support of Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin who he helped to victory in the 2014 race. But he will find it harder to dismiss the concerns of the major sponsors who have bankrolled FIFA's recovery from near bankruptcy in the wake of the collapse of sports marketing group ISL to an organisation sitting on reserves of $1.3bn a year thanks to bumper TV and advertising deals.

"I have to say that in general we have had a good relationship with FIFA for a long time. But obviously all that has happened in the last few days is neither positive for sport or for FIFA," said adidas chief executive Herbert Hainer.

However, the claims against Blatter, Bin Hammam and Warner are far from the only allegations facing the organisation. It was partly Blatter's desire to turn the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups into a twin-track circus that created the climate for corruption and turned the spotlight on FIFA's inner workings.

The English FA has passed its own file of evidence to FIFA collected in the wake of allegations made by the former FA chairman Lord Triesman against four executive committee members -- Warner, Nicolas Leoz, Ricardo Teixeira and Worawi Makudi -- of soliciting inducements during the 2018 World Cup bidding process. A claim that Warner asked for financial help to build an education centre has been backed up by Premier League chairman Dave Richards, while the file also includes an email from Warner to Triesman asking the FA to pay for Haiti's World Cup television rights through him.

Two other FIFA executive committee members, the Nigerian Amos Adamu and Oceania's representative Reynald Temarii, were suspended by FIFA in October following a cash-for-votes investigation by the Sunday Times. Two more, Jacques Anouma and Issa Hayatou, were accused by an anonymous whistleblower of accepting bribes of $1.5m from the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid according to evidence submitted by the paper to a parliamentary inquiry.

Hayatou, Leoz and Teixeira were also accused by a BBC television documentary of accepting bribes from a $100m slush fund administered by ISL in the 1990s. All have denied the allegations.

Last week it also emerged that Teixeira faces a Brazilian parliamentary inquiry into his activities.

Observer

http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/fifas-jury-of-12-hold-key-to-growing-legal-storm-2660727.html

Football's cosy cartel begins to crumble from within

By Tommy Conlon
Sunday May 29 2011

Let's get this clear: the chap from Qatar and the chap from Trinidad have been accused of offering cash bribes for votes. They have been summoned to account for themselves before a regulatory committee, which will convene today.

The chap from Qatar, Mohamed Bin Hammam, apparently believes this is a conspiracy, orchestrated by his rival for those same votes, one Joseph S Blatter. So he has made a counterclaim against his rival and now Blatter will also have to face the same committee today.

Bin Hammam has not accused Blatter of bribery. He has complained instead that Blatter was aware of these bribery allegations and did nothing about them. In other words, his grievance seemingly is that Blatter didn't investigate him, Bin Hammam, about bribes he denies ever offering in the first place. Bin Hammam has said the allegations are "without substance", but he wants Blatter to explain why he didn't investigate them anyway.

Either that, or he wants Blatter to explain why he didn't investigate the role of the chap from Trinidad, Jack Warner, in these allegations. But if Bin Hammam wants Warner investigated, he will be bringing a world of trouble down on his own head too because both of them were together when the alleged bungs were being offered.

Welcome to the wacky world of FIFA, where a long-running boardroom farce full of backroom chicanery appears to be reaching some sort of dénouement. One can only conclude that if a man is navigating a world that's as twisted as a corkscrew, the danger is that when he tries to stab someone else in the back he'll end up stabbing himself.

There are signs that the junta which runs world football is starting to crumble from within. Having spent years sweeping corruption allegations under the carpet, they were too deluded to notice that they were merely sweeping it into a big hump in the middle of the floor.

It swelled like a balloon after the recent bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. It started to stink like never before and this time Blatter, the FIFA president, couldn't shake off the smell. It has spread like a contagion to other members of the FIFA executive committee where nine of its members -- including Warner and Bin Hammam -- are now facing bribery allegations.

Which is why some of them are falling out like thieves. And why long-time allies like the three amigos mentioned above are turning on each other as the next presidential election looms. On Wednesday, Blatter, 75, will seek another four-year term as president at FIFA Congress. Bin Hammam, president of the Asian Football Confederation, is contesting the election. Jack Warner is president of Concacaf, the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football. On May 10 and 11 last the pair met with delegates from the Caribbean Football Union. This is Warner's territory and he has dominated football politics here for over 25 years. Bin Hammam was canvassing votes from these delegates. It is alleged he offered inducements of $40,000 per head.

An American member of FIFA's executive committee, a blazer rejoicing in the name Chuck Blazer, was informed of these alleged bribes. He commissioned a US lawyer, John Collins, to investigate the claims. Collins' dossier reportedly includes signed affidavits, text messages, photographs and email correspondence.

It was on foot of this dossier that Bin Hamman and Warner were summoned to appear before FIFA's ethics committee today. And it was in reply to this summons that Bin Hammam decided that Blatter had a case to answer too.

The abiding impression of these goons is that, like most sports politicians, they're amateurs. They reek of wealth and power but they are strictly second-rate. The major players in the corruption game these days, be it in politics or finance, build a superstructure around themselves of lawyers, accountants and managers. They are hard to get at, they bury the evidence deep.

Blatter comes along and gives a World Cup to Qatar. And thinks that no one will notice. There is a stream of corruption allegations against FIFA members dating back years, a lot of it on the public record. Warner was caught red-handed selling tickets to the black market for the 2006 World Cup.

Bin Hammam likewise for the 2002 World Cup. For 20 years FIFA handed over its World Cup commercial rights to one Swiss company, ISL, that went bankrupt in 2001. Subsequent investigations in the Swiss courts found a massive network of kickbacks, worth tens of millions, ending up in the accounts of senior FIFA executives.

Jack Warner and Mohamed Bin Hammam were key allies of Blatter when he won the FIFA presidency after Joao Havelange retired in 1998. They helped Blatter consolidate his power in subsequent years. In return, they supped long and hard from the trough. They were all in it together. Perhaps Blatter was getting a tad nostalgic last week when he described Warner and Bin Hammam as long-time friends.

"I take no joy," he said, "to see men who stood by my side for some two decades suffer through public humiliation without having been convicted of any wrongdoing." Blatter presumably wasn't feeling quite as sympathetic when Bin Hammam decided to drag him into the quicksand alongside he and Warner the next day.

One can only hope that the hitherto underemployed ethics committee throws them not a life buoy, but a concrete block instead.

thecouch@independent.ie

- Tommy Conlon

http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/footballs-cosy-cartel-begins-to-crumble-from-within-2660612.html