The stench of corruption
Rob Hughes International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2006
Alittle less than one year ago, Sepp Blatter, president of soccer's governing body, wrote that "FIFA cannot sit by and see greed rule football - nor shall we."
Blatter, whose previous occupations included journalism, made the remark in a column for The Financial Times denouncing what he called the "pornographic amount of money" circulating around the richest clubs and going into the pockets of "semi-educated, sometimes foul-mouthed players holding clubs to ransom."
He vowed to curb the excesses for the good of the game. And last week, FIFA appointed Sebastian Coe, the double Olympic gold medal athlete, as head of a new ethics commission to scrutinize soccer's business.
But the appointment raises more questions than answers.
Coe was a fantastic middle-distance runner 20 years ago and a sometime politician after that.
But he already has an enormous workload. He runs the London 2012 Olympic Games organization and is a prominent campaigner against drugs in sport through his role on the ethics commission of international track and field.
Why has FIFA chosen an outsider to head a group looking into ethics? What teeth will Coe's committee have? And how high in the chain of command will he be allowed to investigate?
Blatter and his predecessor, Joćo Havelange, have overseen three decades during which the sport has grown hugely in wealth through television and sponsorship. Winning and sustaining the presidency has entailed mobilizing huge voting bases in Africa and the Americas.
Two men who rose to prominence on the FIFA executive were Ismail Bhamjee, the Botswana representative, and Jack Warner from Trinidad and Tobago.
Africa alone commands a quarter of FIFA's 204 member states, with a one country-one vote electorate. And Warner has delivered the Caribbean and North American members and used his influence to persuade others from Europe to Asia to support Blatter.
There are new elections next spring. Blatter is standing for another four-year mandate to continue his work. Warner, a vice president, is close to the throne.
However, he is also under investigation.
His family is accused of profiteering from selling World Cup tickets for much more than face value. In short, of touting, or scalping.
Warner, who denies the charges, is fighting his corner with the help of an American lawyer, John Collins, who is also a member of the FIFA legal committee. Collins suggests that Ernst & Young, the auditors of FIFA, produced a report in July that was "fatally flawed and based on incomplete information and erroneous conclusions."
The Ernst & Young report, leaked to the media, linked the company Simpaul Travel - now run by Warner's son Daryan - to thousands of tickets for games involving England, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico and Japan at the World Cup.
Warner acknowledges signing an invoice for thousands of tickets to Simpaul Travel, but says his son had already paid for them in cash weeks earlier.
The Ernst & Young report said 900 tickets for England matches, 1,500 for Mexico games and 3,000 for Japan were obtained by the Warners and sold through the travel company that had exclusive rights in the Caribbean to ticket- and-hotel packages worth more than $1 million.
As for Bhamjee, on June 17 he was expelled from the World Cup after admitting that he had sold 12 tickets for England vs. Trinidad and Tobago for $330 each, three times the face value.
Many fans were unable to afford black-market prices at the event and had to watch matches on outdoor screens.
Bhamjee, no longer on the executive committee, forfeited the $500 per diem allowance paid to each member of the committee. And he returned home to Africa with Blatter's words ringing in his ears.
"I am very disappointed about the conduct of a member of the FIFA executive committee," Blatter said. "In such a situation, FIFA acts immediately and firmly."
Yet last February, Warner was reprimanded over the accusations against him and was allowed to stay on the executive committee, despite a ruling from FIFA's ethics committee that there was a conflict of interest in his being a special adviser to the Trinidad and Tobago soccer federation and owning the travel company holding exclusive license for World Cup tickets in the region.
He resigned from his role at the travel company to save his seat as FIFA vice president, and he says that he and his wife have sold their shares in Simpaul.
Notably, the ethics committee that cited a conflict of interest is not the one Coe will lead. Furthermore, Coe will not investigate Warner. The FIFA disciplinary committee, including colleagues of Warner on the executive committee, will do that.
Coe's brief is only to judge new, not old, questions of ethics.
As for Coe himself, the sole conflict of interest he has to declare is his lifelong support of Chelsea, the London club where he is a season-ticket holder.
Meanwhile, a letter from Blatter to the executive members last week chastised the unidentified member who leaked the Ernst & Young report.
In the same letter, Blatter told the executive committee that the stipulation that Warner's pledge to pay any profits from the sale of World Cup tickets to the SOS Children's Village Organization had not in fact transpired.
At the same time, FIFA is awaiting civil action through the American courts by MasterCard, which says that FIFA reneged on a deal to give it first refusal to renew its long-term sponsorship and instead gave the new contract to Visa.
And on Tuesday, the BBC was to broadcast an investigation into illegal payments between agents and club managers on the transfer of players.
Reportedly, two agents were filmed by hidden cameras boasting of the managers who like "bungs" - a term for payments to buy and sell players. The BBC has bleeped out the names of the managers.
Two prominent team managers, Harry Redknapp of Portsmouth and Sam Allardyce of Bolton Wanderers, said they were consulting their lawyers about the program.
The program reportedly also exposes a loophole through which English clubs have used Belgian outlets to import African talents on the cheap.
Coe will have his work cut out for him, and so might the governments of the European Union, whose sports ministers were to meet Tuesday.
Corruption evidently festers in the not-so-beautiful game.
