The Football Association chairman, Greg Dyke, is to defy Fifa’s ethics committee and refuse to hand back the £16,000 watch he was given at the World Cup, instead auctioning it for charity.
After it emerged that the Brazilian FA had handed out 65 designer watches worth more than £1m at the World Cup Dyke said he had no idea the timepiece was worth so much and that he would return it as requested.
But after finding out he would have to pay import duty on the Parmigiani watch regardless, he has decided to pay the fee and donate the watch to the FA’s nominated charity Breast Cancer Care.
“I am not going to send it back to the Fifa ethics committee as they have requested,” he told ITV. “I’ve now been told that I’ve got to pay £3,000 VAT on this watch regardless of whether I send it back or not. So I’ve decided instead to pay the VAT and give the watch to this year’s FA charity.”
Dyke was given one of the limited edition Parmigiani watches, worth £16,344, by the Brazilian FA during a Fifa Congress in São Paulo that was dominated by corruption allegations and protests.
They had been given to the 28 officials on Fifa’s ruling executive committee, a representative from each of the 32 member associations and representatives from South America’s governing body.
Dyke said last month that the watch had remained in its packaging in his home office since he returned from Brazil and had been destined for charity.
“The fact that gifts of great value are being handed out randomly and often with the recipient unaware shows up a culture in need of change,” he said.
Fifa’s ethics committee also knocked back a separate request from Fifa’s secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, to hand each member of Fifa’s ethics committee two Hublot watches donated by the Fifa sponsor.
Uefa’s president, Michel Platini, also said he would prefer not to send back his watch because it was not in his nature to refuse gifts, instead offering to make a donation to charity. But he said that, if Fifa insisted, then he would return it.
