The 90-day suspensions of the Fifa and Uefa presidents Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini for alleged misconduct, which both men are appealing against, have gone some way to contradicting the perception that the Fifa ethics committee lacks independence and was the president’s tool. Just the day before, the Korean former Fifa executive committee member Chung Mong-joon was raging that the ethics committee, which had proceedings against him, was a “hitman” for Blatter, to remove his opponents.
That was how it seemed to many in football when Hans-Joachim Eckert, the Munich judge who chairs the “adjudicatory”, sanction-deciding arm of the ethics committee, published his summary of the report into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process prepared by Michael Garcia, then the chairman of the investigatory branch. Devoting four specific paragraphs to Blatter’s role, Eckert’s summary seemed to go out of its way to absolve the Fifa president by name of any wrongdoing, and explicitly praising his conduct.
Eckert, in “remarks to president Blatter”, noted that the Fifa president had “implemented a number of critical reforms, including those that made this inquiry possible”. The judge also said of Blatter: “As head of the organisation, he also deserves credit for the cooperation Fifa demonstrated throughout this investigation.”
That was widely seen as unnecessarily generous to Blatter, a perception deepened by Garcia’s furious reaction and resignation following Eckert’s summary, which Garcia claimed “contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations”.
Cornel Borbély, a former Swiss public prosecutor and head of economic crime investigations for the canton of Zurich, Garcia’s deputy, was then appointed by Fifa’s congress to chair the investigatory chamber. He sought to make it publicly clear he would not be pushed around or act on Blatter’s orders.
“This is absurd,” he said in response to that suggestion, “and any such claim is not founded in any facts that I could comprehend or cite. I can only emphasise that I am not an employee of Fifa. I run my own law firm and I don’t take any orders at all from Fifa – none whatsoever – I am completely independent of any Fifa officials.”
Borbély’s branch of the ethics committee duly recommended proceedings against Blatter, Platini and the Fifa general secretary Jérôme Valcke, and Eckert’s branch suspended all three – and banned Chung himself for six years for misconduct.
A spokesman for Borbély’s investigatory branch of the ethics committee said that the action against Blatter and Platini is a concrete demonstration of Borbély’s independence.
“We always made very clear that we will open formal proceedings against anybody regardless of their name and function, if there is clear evidence on the table,” he said. “This has been proven by the decisions of this week.”
Blatter is the subject of two criminal proceedings by the Swiss attorney general, relating to a TV rights contract with the Caribbean Football Union allegedly at an undervalue to Fifa, and a 2m Swiss francs payment to Platini in 2011, nine years after the conclusion of the work both men say it related to. Blatter and Platini, who deny wrongdoing, have both appealed the suspensions, which are aimed at enabling an objective investigation to happen without any potential intrusions by those accused.
Meanwhile, the administrators at football’s world governing body – 470 staff are employed – are keen to stress that their work is continuing, despite the deluge of corruption scandals which has burst in the executive echelons above their heads. Delia Fischer, Fifa’s head of media, pointed to the summer’s successful Women’s World Cup in Canada and Under-20 World Cup in New Zealand, the forthcoming Under-17 World Cup in Chile, preparations for the 2018 World Cup in Russia and Fifa’s football development programmes as evidence that those working at the organisation are trying to focus on business as usual.
“For sure these are challenging times,” Fischer said, “but the organisation is functioning, and the Fifa administration is well-equipped to manage the business of world football. A crisis also brings an opportunity and we are cooperating with the transition to strengthen the governance mechanisms.”
Valcke’s deputy, Markus Kattner, the former head of finance, has become acting secretary-general in Valcke’s absence, and Fifa’s legal counsel, Marco Villiger, is handling the response to the US and Swiss criminal investigations and an internal review, being conducted by the US law firm Quinn Emanuel. The calls for an independent reform process are, however, growing stronger.
