The growing stink at FIFA
The case for a replay
New light is being shed on the choice of Qatar to host football’s biggest event in 2022
Jun 7th 2014
.
EVER since 2010, when Qatar was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup, there have been suspicions about how one of the world’s least suitable football venues succeeded in snagging the sport’s greatest tournament. So revelations published on June 1st by the Sunday Times, a British newspaper, of e-mails detailing lavish campaigning by Mohamed bin Hammam, a disgraced former FIFA vice-president from the tiny, hot and scorching Gulf state, shocked, but did not surprise. Football’s tarnished world governing body is now under pressure to re-run the bidding process—pressure that on past form its 78-year-old president, the ineffably complacent Sepp Blatter, will try to resist.
Even an operator as wily as Mr Blatter, who suggested last month that he intends to run for a fifth four-year term at the head of FIFA, will need all his backroom political skills to sidestep the outrage. Though there is no suggestion that he is personally corrupt, it is now clear that he has presided over what many people in football regard as a sewer of dodgy dealing.
Several members of FIFA’s executive committee (known as Exco) have been forced out in recent years: two for soliciting bribes from undercover reporters before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa; and two more, one of them Mr bin Hammam, after being accused of offering bribes to Caribbean football officials in a plot to replace Mr Blatter with the Qatari. Mr bin Hammam was subsequently banned from football administration for life.
But on his re-election in 2011 Mr Blatter blithely denied that FIFA was in crisis and promised, implausibly, to reform it. Six months later he announced that he was setting up an independent governance committee led by Mark Pieth, a respected Swiss jurist, to advise FIFA on how to clean up its act. Though Mr Blatter ultimately rejected some of its proposals, he did agree to the creation of an ethics court under Mr Pieth and the appointment of Michael Garcia, an American lawyer, to investigate allegations of vote-rigging and bribery, including those relating to the choice of Russia as host in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. Mr Garcia says that he will complete the first stage of his investigation on June 9th, three days before this year’s World Cup kicks off in Brazil; a new “adjudicatory chamber” will receive his report six weeks later.
Mr Garcia, who has spent almost a year and £6m travelling the world in pursuit of the truth, says his report will consider “all evidence potentially related to the bidding process, including evidence collected from prior investigations”. But to the dismay of FIFA’s critics, he will not be examining the e-mails obtained by the Sunday Times, which support fresh allegations that Mr bin Hammam wooed African footballing bigwigs with a $5m slush fund and lavish junkets. To do so would delay the report substantially, and Mr Garcia may already be familiar with some of the e-mail evidence that appears to have come from a FIFA whistleblower.
But although he has interviewed members of all nine teams who put in bids for either 2018 or 2022, including the Qataris, he seems not to have questioned Mr bin Hammam himself. That could make it hard for his findings to command confidence.
Lawyers for the Qatari bidding team say their client had no connection with their country’s most powerful football administrator. Hassan al-Thawadi, the former chief executive of the Qatar bid and now secretary-general of the 2022 World Cup organising committee, says that “Mohamed bin Hammam is his own man; he and Qatar ’22 are completely independent and separate.” But the Sunday Times’ FIFA files appear to tell a very different story.
Mr bin Hammam’s private office and the bid team shared the same building, and one of his closest aides was employed by the bid team. The e-mails are said to suggest regular contact between him and Mr al-Thawadi, and secret meetings between the Qataris and ten Exco members. It is also alleged that Mr bin Hammam made trips to lobby potential voters in a jet from a fleet reserved for the Qatari royal family. If a direct connection is established so convincingly that even FIFA cannot ignore it, the case for a new contest will be hard to resist. Mr Pieth has described the Sunday Times e-mails as a possible “smoking gun”.
The fresh allegations cover only the four votes from African Exco members, of a total of 14 that Qatar received in the final voting round. That leaves ten others who were prepared to dismiss the warnings of FIFA’s own technical committee, which described Qatar as the only high-risk bidder (the others were America, Australia, Japan and South Korea) and said that the summer heat would be dangerous for players, despite claims being made for unproven stadium-cooling technologies.
A particular mystery is why Michel Platini, the president of FIFA’s European branch, voted for Qatar, when it seemed likely all along that it would mean shifting the tournament from June to December, when temperatures fall. That has infuriated European leagues, whose interests he is supposed to represent, since they will have to close for a month. In November 2010, ten days before Qatar was chosen, Mr Platini, Qatar’s prime minister and its crown prince attended a lunch at the Elysée Palace with Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president at the time.
The following year major trade deals were concluded between Qatar and France, and Qatar Sports Investments, a state-owned firm, bought Paris Saint-Germain, the team Mr Sarkozy supports, which has since spent a fortune on some of the world’s best players. Shortly afterwards Mr Platini’s son became the boss of Burdda, a Qatari-owned sports kit company. Mr Platini denies none of this, but insists it did not influence his vote.
What happens next will depend on Mr Garcia’s report and on further revelations the Sunday Times promises for the coming weeks. The case for stripping Qatar of the 2022 World Cup appears unassailable. But though incorporated as a Swiss non-profit organisation, FIFA acts as a law unto itself. Swiss parliamentarians could threaten to end its favourable tax treatment.
Its six biggest sponsors (Adidas, Coca-Cola, Emirates, Hyundai, Sony and Visa) could also apply pressure. But they have kept quiet up to now. Mr Blatter must be hoping that once this year’s World Cup gets under way on June 12th, attention will shift from the ugly dealings in football’s governing body back to the beautiful game itself.
EVER since 2010, when Qatar was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup, there have been suspicions about how one of the world’s least suitable football venues succeeded in snagging the sport’s greatest tournament. So revelations published on June 1st by the Sunday Times, a British newspaper, of e-mails detailing lavish campaigning by Mohamed bin Hammam, a disgraced former FIFA vice-president from the tiny, hot and scorching Gulf state, shocked, but did not surprise. Football’s tarnished world governing body is now under pressure to re-run the bidding process—pressure that on past form its 78-year-old president, the ineffably complacent Sepp Blatter, will try to resist.
Even an operator as wily as Mr Blatter, who suggested last month that he intends to run for a fifth four-year term at the head of FIFA, will need all his backroom political skills to sidestep the outrage. Though there is no suggestion that he is personally corrupt, it is now clear that he has presided over what many people in football regard as a sewer of dodgy dealing.
Several members of FIFA’s executive committee (known as Exco) have been forced out in recent years: two for soliciting bribes from undercover reporters before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa; and two more, one of them Mr bin Hammam, after being accused of offering bribes to Caribbean football officials in a plot to replace Mr Blatter with the Qatari. Mr bin Hammam was subsequently banned from football administration for life.
But on his re-election in 2011 Mr Blatter blithely denied that FIFA was in crisis and promised, implausibly, to reform it. Six months later he announced that he was setting up an independent governance committee led by Mark Pieth, a respected Swiss jurist, to advise FIFA on how to clean up its act. Though Mr Blatter ultimately rejected some of its proposals, he did agree to the creation of an ethics court under Mr Pieth and the appointment of Michael Garcia, an American lawyer, to investigate allegations of vote-rigging and bribery, including those relating to the choice of Russia as host in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. Mr Garcia says that he will complete the first stage of his investigation on June 9th, three days before this year’s World Cup kicks off in Brazil; a new “adjudicatory chamber” will receive his report six weeks later.
Mr Garcia, who has spent almost a year and £6m travelling the world in pursuit of the truth, says his report will consider “all evidence potentially related to the bidding process, including evidence collected from prior investigations”. But to the dismay of FIFA’s critics, he will not be examining the e-mails obtained by the Sunday Times, which support fresh allegations that Mr bin Hammam wooed African footballing bigwigs with a $5m slush fund and lavish junkets. To do so would delay the report substantially, and Mr Garcia may already be familiar with some of the e-mail evidence that appears to have come from a FIFA whistleblower.
But although he has interviewed members of all nine teams who put in bids for either 2018 or 2022, including the Qataris, he seems not to have questioned Mr bin Hammam himself. That could make it hard for his findings to command confidence.
Lawyers for the Qatari bidding team say their client had no connection with their country’s most powerful football administrator. Hassan al-Thawadi, the former chief executive of the Qatar bid and now secretary-general of the 2022 World Cup organising committee, says that “Mohamed bin Hammam is his own man; he and Qatar ’22 are completely independent and separate.” But the Sunday Times’ FIFA files appear to tell a very different story.
Mr bin Hammam’s private office and the bid team shared the same building, and one of his closest aides was employed by the bid team. The e-mails are said to suggest regular contact between him and Mr al-Thawadi, and secret meetings between the Qataris and ten Exco members. It is also alleged that Mr bin Hammam made trips to lobby potential voters in a jet from a fleet reserved for the Qatari royal family. If a direct connection is established so convincingly that even FIFA cannot ignore it, the case for a new contest will be hard to resist. Mr Pieth has described the Sunday Times e-mails as a possible “smoking gun”.
The fresh allegations cover only the four votes from African Exco members, of a total of 14 that Qatar received in the final voting round. That leaves ten others who were prepared to dismiss the warnings of FIFA’s own technical committee, which described Qatar as the only high-risk bidder (the others were America, Australia, Japan and South Korea) and said that the summer heat would be dangerous for players, despite claims being made for unproven stadium-cooling technologies.
A particular mystery is why Michel Platini, the president of FIFA’s European branch, voted for Qatar, when it seemed likely all along that it would mean shifting the tournament from June to December, when temperatures fall. That has infuriated European leagues, whose interests he is supposed to represent, since they will have to close for a month. In November 2010, ten days before Qatar was chosen, Mr Platini, Qatar’s prime minister and its crown prince attended a lunch at the Elysée Palace with Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president at the time.
The following year major trade deals were concluded between Qatar and France, and Qatar Sports Investments, a state-owned firm, bought Paris Saint-Germain, the team Mr Sarkozy supports, which has since spent a fortune on some of the world’s best players. Shortly afterwards Mr Platini’s son became the boss of Burdda, a Qatari-owned sports kit company. Mr Platini denies none of this, but insists it did not influence his vote.
What happens next will depend on Mr Garcia’s report and on further revelations the Sunday Times promises for the coming weeks. The case for stripping Qatar of the 2022 World Cup appears unassailable. But though incorporated as a Swiss non-profit organisation, FIFA acts as a law unto itself. Swiss parliamentarians could threaten to end its favourable tax treatment.
Its six biggest sponsors (Adidas, Coca-Cola, Emirates, Hyundai, Sony and Visa) could also apply pressure. But they have kept quiet up to now. Mr Blatter must be hoping that once this year’s World Cup gets under way on June 12th, attention will shift from the ugly dealings in football’s governing body back to the beautiful game itself.
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario