Written evidence submitted by The Sunday
Times
In your call for evidence for the football governance
inquiry you asked if the sport's ruling bodies are fit for purpose.
The Sunday Times would like to submit evidence on FIFA, the governing
body ofthe world game and, in particular, the way it governs the
competition to host the finals of the world cup -a prize potentially
worth billions of pounds to the winning nation. It is an issue
with direct relevance to the UK as the English Football Association
won only two votes out of 24 in its bid for the 2018 world cup
competition last year, despite spending £19 million campaigning
for what most people agreed was one of the strongest bids in the
competition. Our own inquiries uncovered allegations of irregularities
in the voting process, both past and present. They included allegations
that Qatar, the winning bidder for 2022, had been offering members
of the Fifa Executive Committee large amounts of money for their
votes. The allegations were and remain unproven, but we believe
they were credible because they were made by people who held or
had held official positions in Fifa (and later supported by a
whistleblower from within the Qatar bid) and were so serious that
you would have expected a responsible governing body to launch
a proper investigation into them. We are not aware of any investigation
into these allegations:
1. On October 1ih last year The Sunday Times
published a story entitled "World Cup Votes for Sale"
which raised a number of concerns about the bidding process to
host the competition. The headline news was that one Fifa Executive
Committee (Exco) member had been filmed agreeing to sell his vote
and a second member had asked for £1.5 million for a sports
academy from an undercover reporter seeking his vote. However,
Fifa should have been equally, if not more, alarmed by our secret
recordings of six further former or current Fifa officials who
were offering to work as fixers for the World Cup bid. Each one
of the six suggested paying huge bribes to Fifa executive committee
members as part of a strategy to win the bid. Vote buying was
clearly engrained in the bidding process.
2. Fifa held a short investigation which resulted
in the suspension of six of the eight people we had named (the
other two no longer worked for Fifa so could not be disciplined).
Fifa has never published the precise reasons for the suspensions.
For Fifa this was a quick end to the matter. The votes for 2018
and 2022 went ahead a few weeks later.
3. As far as we can see, there was no attempt
to investigate why the six officials had all claimed that a successful
bid appeared to need to buy votes. Furthermore, the tape-recordings
we provided to Fifa contained clear allegations that attempts
to buy votes had taken place in the current and past bid contest.
As far as we can see, these allegations were not investigated
either.
4. The activities of the Qatar bid had come to
our attention a number of times during our investigation. In July
2010 we spoke to Ismail Bhamjee, who used to be one of the four
African Fifa Exco members and was keen to work as a fixer for
the undercover reporters. Bhamjee said his three fellow African
members -Issa Hayatou of Cameroon, Slim Aloulou of Tunisia and
Amadou Diakite of the Ivory Coast -had each been paid for their
votes by Morocco when it was bidding against South Africa in the
contest for the 2010 Wodd Cup. He then offered to go away and
find out what the current African Fifa Exco members were being
offered by Qatar.
The following is an extract from the undercover meeting
we had with Bhamjee:
Reporter I: And
we assume they're very rich, Qatar.
Ismail: Yeah,
yeah, yeah. And I'm told the Africans will get.
Reporter II: Will
get something.
Reporter I:
From Qatar?
Ismail: Yeah.
Anything from a quarter to half a million dollars.
Reporter I:
A quarter to half a million dollars?
Reporter II:
And is that quarter to half a million dollars, is that to invest
in football? Or is that for them?
Ismail: No,
no, no, no. This is on top. This is separate from the football.
Reporter II:
That's for money, personal money?
Ismail: Yeah,
they get.
5. Our reporters then met Michel Zen Ruffinen,
the former Secretary General ofFifa, who went through a list ofFifa
Exco members who he said could be bought. In Cairo, Zen Ruffinen
introduced the reporters to an acquaintance called Amadou Diallo.
Over a series of conversations Zen Ruffinen claimed that Qatar
was using Diallo to arrange financial deals with the African members
in exchange for WorId Cup votes. Further inquiries established
that Diallo had been employed by the Qatar bid and was also the
"charge de mission" (chief assistant) to Issa Hayatou,
the president of the Confederation of African Football.
6. Our reporters then spoke to Amadou Diakite
who, like Bhamjee had been one of the African Fifa Exco members
but had moved on to be a member of the Fifa's Referees' Committee.
He said the African Fifa Exco members had been offered between
$1 to $1.2 million US dollars for "projects" by Qatar
in return for their 2022 vote. He claimed to be in contact with
the members but it wasn't clear whether this was directly or through
an intermediary. Over six telephone conversations he was repeatedly
asked by our reporters to check details about the financial deal
being offered by Qatar to the Fifa Exco members and kept coming
back with fresh information. He said it was normal for a third
of such financial offer to be paid up front and then the member
would collect the rest of the cash if the bid was successful.
7. The allegations regarding the Qatar bid and
financial offers were highlighted in the letters sent to Fifa
before and after publication of our original article. The conversations
were also on the video and audio recordings we sent to Fifa. However,
Fifa does not appear to have pursued any of these matters.
8. The Qatar bid hired a firm of solicitors in
London when we put the allegations to them. Its lawyers described
the allegations as "entirely false". It was a difficult
story for The Sunday Times to publish as none of the three people
who made the allegations against Qatar was ever likely to be willing
to appear as a witness. However, in our view they had no reason
to fabricate these allegations. Their allegations should, at least,
have been examined by Fifa.
9. Last December we spoke to a whistleblower
who had worked with the Qatar bid. The whistleblower claimed Qatar
had paid $1.5 million to two Fifa Exco members -Hayatou and Jaques
Anouma ofthe Ivory Coast -to secure their votes. It was futher
alleged that a similar deal had been struck with Amos Adamu, although
he was prevented from voting because he was suspended following
our original article. The whistleblower said that the cash was
to go to the three members' football federations but there would
be no questions asked about how the money was used: "It was
said in such a way that "we are giving it to you". It
was going to their federation. Basically, if they took it into
their pocket, we don't give a jack," the whistleblower told
us.
10. The whistleblower's allegations raise questions
about the validity of Qatar's winning bid. Hayatou and Anouma
are both reported to have voted for Qatar. We published the whistleblower's
claims in December in an article which did not name the bidder
or the members involved. Ivan Lewis, the shadow culture secretary
wrote to Fifa requesting an independent investigation. Fifa did
not write back.
11. The original evidence that we sent to Fifa
also contained other serious allegations which appear to have
been ignored. Ahongalu Fusimalohi, the former Fifa Exco member
from the Oceania, was recorded talking about how he had been offered
bribes by the Morroco bid committee during the 2004 contest for
the 2010 World Cup. He said he turned them down, although he was
not against paying bribes as he advised our undercover reporter
to offer money to Oceania's current Fifa Exco member. Fusimalohi
also claimed that his friend Bhamjee had told him that he (Bhamjee)
had taken Morocco's money in return for his vote. As mentioned
previously (point 4), Bhamjee himself accused his three fellow
African Fifa EXco members of accepting Morocco's money. Bhamjee
also claimed that Jack Warner, the Fifa Exco member for Trinidad
and Tobago, had been paid $lm by Morocco for his vote. There are
only 24 Exco members and they are effectively the ruling body
of Fifa. It therefore seems extraordinary that such serious allegations
by and about such senior officials were effectively swept under
the carpet.
Jonathan Calvert and
Claire Newell
The Sunday Times Insight team
9 May 2011
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