Inside Fifa, where no one can tell where the money ends up
By Matt Scott (guardian.co.uk)
Seven days ago, an individual at the heart of Mohamed Bin Hammam's Fifa presidential-election campaign was clear on what football's global governing body has become in the 13 years of Sepp Blatter's leadership. "Fifa has been transformed into a personal, private organisation," he said. "Everyone must work within Fifa on this principle or they are out."
As Bin Hammam stands charged by Fifa with alleged breaches of its ethics code that could end his career in football politics, let alone his presidential chances, those words seem prescient. He disputes the bribery accusations, also aimed at the Concacaf president, Jack Warner, raised by a fellow Fifa executive-committee member, the American Chuck Blazer, and rails against them as a "tactic" enacted by an electorally embattled Blatter. The Qatari challenger is certainly not alone in believing that he is at the centre of a politically motivated witch hunt.
Those around Blatter have sought to separate the political struggle from the scandal currently engulfing Fifa's Zurich headquarters. But accusations that Fifa's political and administrative structures have become inextricably entwined with Blatter's personal agenda are never far away. "What Fifa needs is reform of the Fifa administration," said a former senior employee who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. "It's a heavyweight body that has been built to keep the business and politics going as they are at the moment. For them there is no need to change anything."
Whatever his part in Fifa's undeniable business success, Blatter's own rise has seemed inexorable. Having started out as its general secretary in 1981, he became chief executive in 1990 before his elevation to president in 1998. Over this time he has been able to take personal credit for an extraordinary uplift in Fifa's revenues. In 2005 Fifa declared total income of $664.7m (£406m). By 2009, the equivalent stage of the next quadrennial World Cup cycle, that figure had climbed to more than $1bn. The practical effect of this wealth creation has been for Fifa to dispense $794m in "development-related expenses" in the four-year period between the 2006 Germany and 2010 South Africa World Cups.
This has created a lot of grateful football associations around the world, all of whom have the opportunity to express their gratitude with votes in presidential elections. Some have more cause to be grateful than others. Fifa's light-touch monitoring of how associations spend the riches it generates is another area that serves an ambitious football politician well, for there are few oversight procedures for how the development funds are spent by the ultimate recipients.
A good example comes from Warner's own national association, Trinidad & Tobago. In the days leading up to the controversial 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid decision last year Warner was involved in a court case in Trinidad & Tobago in which it emerged that at no point after the 2006 World Cup had the T&T Football Association prepared audited accounts detailing what it received from sponsorship or central Fifa disbursements relating to the World Cup. This state of affairs rendered funds paid into the accounts of the federation completely untraceable. There is no evidence of any wrongdoing by Warner or the TTFA, but the troubling point is that there is no evidence of anything.
Likewise Jacques Anouma, whom the Sunday Times this month accused under parliamentary privilege of receiving $1.5m in bribes from the Qatar World Cup bid – which he denies – faces accusations in his homeland of obfuscation. Anouma is, as the Ivory Coast's representative on the Fifa executive committee, another of the 24 most powerful men in world football.
"After the 2010 World Cup [Anouma] never gave a detailed account of the FIF's [the Ivorian FA] financial activities to the presidents of the clubs," said an Ivorian journalist who asked not to be named. "There's a lack of transparency. Nothing's clear about sponsorship money. It's impossible to see what the FIF earns from sponsorship."
And so how the billions of pounds the world governing body generates every four years from a sponsorship and broadcasting-rights bonanza are truly benefiting the world game is rendered largely invisible. Some within Fifa are concerned that this lack of accountability is a dangerous drain on world football's resources. "The whole business is very opaque," added the former senior employee of Fifa. "A small group of people is hiding a lot. The whole key is to receive more information, about what comes through the so-called sport-development and CSR programmes of Fifa."
Anouma's West African rival Amos Adamu lost his post on the Fifa executive committee when the ethics committee probed the Sunday Times's allegations that he and another ex-co member, Reynald Temarii, were willing to accept bribes. The retribution was swift and decisive, with Blatter talking about "angels and devils". But the purge was only partial.
The Brazilian politician Anthony Garotinho has called for a parliamentary inquiry into widespread allegations about the conduct of Ricardo Teixeira, another Fifa ex-co member, and his business interests. At one point up to a third of Brazil's parliament supported his petition although later, after lobbying from Teixeira and the Brazilian football federation, a political donor, several withdrew their signatures. At Fifa, meanwhile, it is as if no one has ever spoken ill of Teixeira, who also happens to be chairman of its multibillion-dollar 2014 World Cup organising committee. Politically, he is a fierce Blatter loyalist and related by marriage to the Swiss's predecessor, João Havelange.
Like a benign cardinal, it seems Blatter will pardon any sin among certain of his flock. Indeed, he talks only of the virtues of his "development programme" without providing any details of what is being developed. In an interview on Fifa.com last September, in which he was asked "what motivates him" after all these years, Blatter said: "When I arrived at Fifa, I was given a task that consisted of putting in place a development programme and of selling the idea to national associations and sponsors. I got down to the job, and in doing so I quite quickly became aware of the fact that football is much more than a game. I then realised that, personally speaking, I had a mission to fulfil. And that mission isn't finished yet."
Julio Grondona, a Blatter loyalist, a Fifa vice-president and the head of its finance committee, described it like this yesterday: "We run socialism with cash. We distribute money so everyone can have some."
Despite Grondona's support, not everyone around Fifa's highest table has always believed in the model. In 2002 the collapse of Fifa's broadcast-rights partner ISL had left its finances in a precarious state. At a press conference in Seoul David Will, Britain's executive-committee member, made public a letter he had distributed to the full Fifa congress.
In it he accused Blatter of allowing Fifa to run at a loss of £215m over his four years as president, effectively rendering the organisation "insolvent". Will, and the four Fifa executive-committee members stood four square behind him — Lennart Johansson, Uefa's top politician whom Blatter had defeated in the 1998 presidential campaign, Issa Hayatou, the Conderation of African Football president who was challenging Blatter at the 2002 election, the Italian Antonio Matarrese and the Korean Chung Mong-joon — were all executive-committee members. All had lost faith in Blatter's presidency.
Yet despite these damaging accusations from men at the very top of the organisation and a pledge from Blatter to effect transparency, his supporters – including such as Libya's Al-Saadi Gaddafi – filibustered the next day's Fifa congress with undiluted praise for the incumbent. The paeans served Blatter well and he was carried back into office, 139 votes to Hayatou's 56.
There was an immediate purge of those Fifa staff who were perceived to have supported the rebels. The general secretary, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, and two of his aides were dispatched, as was the director of communications, Keith Cooper, among others. After such a process of cleansing, their heirs on the Fifa staff might be forgiven for slavishly delivering a presidential agenda. Resistance is demonstrably futile.
Jérôme Valcke, the current general secretary, is known to believe that if Bin Hammam wins next Wednesday's presidential election he will be ousted from his role as Fifa's most senior functionary, so it may have been with some relish that he referred the allegations about the Qatari and Warner to the ethics committee.
Although Bin Hammam has publicly stated that Blatter would continue to have a role at Fifa under his presidency, such is the rancour between the two rivals that Blatter must surely win next week — if an election goes ahead at all — to have an ongoing involvement at Fifa House. To lose would present a major problem for the 75-year-old: those who know him best say without any hint of humour that if he and Fifa are separated, Blatter would die of a broken heart.
