The biggest bombshell in the criminal indictment of Fifa officials that US prosecutors landed on Sepp Blatter’s presidential coronation last week was the $10m bribe-for-votes allegation at its precise centre: page 82 of 164. And Fifa’s fantastically brief statement in response, finally drawn out of a no comment stance, has now only detonated further explosive questions.
These reach far beyond the individual position of the general secretary, Jérôme Valcke, the contradiction between Fifa’s apparent denial that he was involved in the $10m payment, and the 2008 South African Football Association letter which requested Valcke personally to organise it. The allegation itself, that $10m dressed up as a grant to the Caribbean for an African “diaspora legacy programme” was paid to accounts controlled by Jack Warner to secure his and two other Fifa executive committee (exco) members’ votes for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup, erupts into the heart of Fifa culture.
Fifa’s seven sentence statement purporting to explain away this huge, profound allegation – already the subject of criminal proceedings and arrests – only reinforces a sense that football’s world governing body operates under Blatter a stance of oblivious disregard.
Explained in the order in which this scandal is slowly unravelling, the $10m payment appeared in the criminal indictment, which had already alleged that Warner, then the president of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf), had sent a family member to pick up “a briefcase containing bundles of US currency in $10,000 stacks,” in a Paris hotel room, from an unnamed official in South Africa’s unsuccessful bid to host the 2006 World Cup.
Then in the months leading to the 2004 exco vote on which country would host the 2010 World Cup, the indictment alleges Warner discussed the proposed $10m payment with Chuck Blazer, his Concacaf secretary general and fellow exco member: “The South African government, and the South African bid committee, including [unnamed] co-conspirator #16, were prepared to arrange for the government of South Africa to pay $10m to the Caribbean Football Union [of which Warner was also the president] to ‘support the African diaspora.’”
The indictment states Blazer, who was promised $1m of the $10m, “understood the offer to be in exchange for the agreement of Warner, Blazer and [unnamed] co-conspirator #17 to all vote for South Africa, rather than Morocco, to host the 2010 World Cup.” They did all apparently vote for South Africa, which was endowed by Fifa with the privilege of hosting the first ever World Cup in Africa – and a promised legacy for the whole continent and its “diaspora.”
The indictment alleges Blazer subsequently learned the South African government itself could not pay the $10m, so instead arrangements were made with Fifa officials – plural – for Fifa to pay it, out of money that was going to South Africa to organise the World Cup. A “high-ranking official” is alleged to have caused the $10m to be paid in January and March 2008 to CFU and Concacaf accounts controlled by Warner. He is accused of having $3m of the $10m diverted for his own personal use. Warner paid Blazer $750,000 eventually in three instalments, the prosecutors allege, after he told Blazer he had already spent the promised $1m.
That shocking allegation produced a denial by the South African sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, that the government knew anything about the $10m payment, or any bribe. Fifa said then it would not comment on “an ongoing investigation,” and on Friday, Blatter was re-elected as president.
Fifa was drawn into making a statement after the New York Times reported Valcke was the “high-ranking official” named in the indictment. The response confirmed $10m was paid, taken out of its own budget for South Africa’s World Cup operations, claiming it was approved by the South African government, “to support the African diaspora in Caribbean countries.” It did indeed have to be “administered and implemented directly” by Warner. Fifa portrays this, so briefly described, as perfectly normal and acceptable, despite the seriousness of the allegations, and all that is known about Warner, who is currently in Trinidad contesting them, and Blazer, who has pleaded guilty.
In its statement Fifa absolved Valcke of “initiation, approval and implementation” of the $10m payment, saying it was authorised by the then finance committee chair, Argentine Julio Grondona, who is now dead.
Then the March 2008 letter to Valcke from the SAFA was revealed by the Press Association. It provided a tangled explanation for the $10m. SAFA told Valcke the South African government had promised $10m for a “diaspora legacy programme,” but then said the government had decided the money should be paid to its own World Cup organising committee. SAFA requested Fifa to withhold $10m from the organising committee, and instead pay the money to be administered directly by Warner, who would be “fiduciary” of the $10m.
The desperate contradictions in this unbelievably brief instruction about $10m are forming a slow burning scandal in South Africa but Fifa’s statement suggests football’s world governing body, which preaches of the good it does through football all over the world, still sees no questions to ask about this affair.
Fifa saw no need to say it is concerned Warner and Blazer are alleged to have pocketed $3.75m of a “diaspora legacy programme” that was in fact bribes for World Cup votes. Leaving Valcke’s personal position aside, these are criminal allegations, after all the rumours, that World Cup exco votes are indeed bought, that cherished legacy programmes in poor parts of the world – including shamefully exploiting the principle of an African diaspora – are indeed shams and are looted by Fifa high-ups.
This allegation has exploded into the heart of Fifa’s culture under Blatter, and the organisation’s response, blithe, seeking to protect Valcke, while inadvertently suggesting there is a howling lack of checks and few questions asked, itself stems from that culture. Nothing to see here? Not this time, surely.
