Soccer’s world governing body, which has little international oversight and has long faced charges of corruption, found itself embattled again Tuesday when six of its top officials were accused of participating in a bribery scandal related to bids for the 2018 and the 2022 World Cups.
The news was particularly embarrassing and perhaps threatening for FIFA’s president, Joseph S. Blatter. Though not accused of corruption himself, Blatter faces re-election next month as his reputation continues to suffer and the organization he runs continues to be plagued with accusations of illicit behavior.
¶The latest charges surfaced Tuesday in a British parliamentary inquiry and were made by a London newspaper, The Sunday Times, and a former chief of England’s failed bid to secure the 2018 World Cup.
¶According to information given to a House of Commons committee by The Sunday Times, two African delegates on FIFA’s executive committee, Issa Hayatou of Cameroon andJacques Anouma of the Ivory Coast, were each reportedly paid $1.5 million to vote for Qatar, which ultimately won the 2022 World Cup in a vote over the United States last November. Qatari officials called the accusations baseless.
¶Meanwhile, according to a former head of England’s 2018 bid, four other FIFA executive members — Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, Nicolás Leoz of Paraguay, Ricardo Teixeira of Brazil and Worawi Makudi of Thailand — behaved in an “improper and unethical” manner ahead of the 2018 vote, which was won by Russia.
¶David Triesman, a former chairman of England’s soccer federation and a former chief of its 2018 World Cup bid, said that Warner suggested that $4 million be paid to finance an education center in Trinidad and asked for more than $800,000 to buy Haiti’s World Cup television rights. Warner, who is the powerful president of FIFA’s North American, Central American and Caribbean region, denied making any such requests.
¶According to Triesman, Leoz asked for an honorary knighthood, Makudi wanted money from British television to approve an exhibition between England and Thailand, and Teixeira asked “to come and tell me what you have got for me.” None of those three accused could be reached for comment.
¶“I cannot say they are all angels or they are all devils,” Blatter told The Associated Press in Zurich, where FIFA is headquartered. “We must have the evidence and then we will act immediately against all those” who violated the organization’s ethical rules.
¶Given his re-election bid on June 1, Blatter may feel pressure to act swiftly and harshly to deal with the new allegations. While he has enriched FIFA’s coffers, his own reputation has suffered considerably since he became its president in 1998. So much so that Grant Wahl, a soccer reporter for Sports Illustrated, attempted to unseat Blatter.
¶Wahl received much international attention but ultimately could not persuade any of the world’s national soccer federations to nominate his candidacy. Instead, Blatter will faceMohamed bin Hammam of Qatar, the president of FIFA’s Asian confederation, who is running as a reform candidate. Blatter told The A.P. on Tuesday, “I’m fighting to clean FIFA.”
¶After championing a widely successful World Cup in South Africa last summer, Blatter had celebrated the 2018 and 2022 votes as further opportunities to bring the world’s largest and most popular sporting event to places where it had never been held — Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
¶But the legitimacy of both votes was cast into doubt even before they occurred. Reporters from The Sunday Times, posing undercover as businessmen, reported before the November votes that two FIFA executives, Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti, had offered to sell their votes. Both were barred from participating in the balloting.
¶Accusations that two other African delegates — Hayatou and Anouma — had accepted bribes to be paid to their respective soccer federations were not published last year for legal reasons, the paper said.
¶Instead, The Sunday Times sent a letter to the parliamentary inquiry, saying that such accusations had been made by a whistleblower who had worked for Qatar’s 2018 bid. (Adamu had reportedly made a similar arrangement but was not allowed to vote after The Times’s article appeared last October, two of the newspaper’s investigative reporters told the parliamentary inquiry.)
¶“The whistleblower’s allegations raise questions about the validity of Qatar’s winning bid,” the Times reporters wrote to inquiry officials.
¶The Qatar soccer federation said the allegations are “evidently wholly unreliable,” and added, “We have nothing to hide.”
¶Sunil Gulati, president of the United States soccer federation, did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
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