Fifa scandals – a rottenness based on corporate greed


Suzanne Beishon

Fifa, football’s most powerful body, has hit the rocks and is sinking fast. Its high-ranking members, looking to save their skins, have begun to spill the beans on decades’ long institutional corruption.

The ongoing bribery and corruption allegations reveal the rottenness of a sporting organisation wedded to profit-driven capitalism and used by unsavoury governments around the world to enhance their international status.

The most explosive information exposing the football body’s systematic racketeering and bribery comes from former Fifa executive member Chuck “super-grass” Blazer – the man who became so bloated on the riches creamed off the world’s most loved sport that he reportedly has a £4,000 a month rented apartment in Trump Tower for his cats!

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as Swiss authorities, are also investigating the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding processes.

Bribery

A leaked letter then exposed a $10 million bribe from South Africa to secure the 2010 World Cup that ended up in the account of former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner through a series of money laundering tricks. Warner is now also facing allegations surrounding a missing $750,000 he raised for Haiti earthquake victims.

And as the net grows tighter and tighter around outgoing President Sepp Blatter, his former special advisor Guido Tognoni has said that Russia and mass migrant worker-killing Qatar may have had to pay bribes to secure their World Cups.

Ironically, Uefa president Michel Platini, bookies favourite to win the Fifa presidency and who has been very vocal in his criticism of Fifa and Sepp Blatter, voted for Qatar in the controversial 2022 vote. He was on the Fifa World Cup Organising Committee for the now suspect 1998 tournament in France.

Even US prosecutor attorney general Loretta Lynch (as exposed by US Uncut) spent much of her career defending greedy Wall Street bankers and handing out paltry fines to banks caught out on her watch.

This horrific system is corrupt and fails ordinary people both in sport and in wider society and urgently needs a complete overhaul from top to bottom.


Corruption: Cameron’s skeletons in the closet

Tory Prime Minister David Cameron has used Fifa’s bribery scandals to call for a global anti-corruption governance campaign. His missive, ahead of the G7 summit of leading capitalist countries, mostly accuses ‘Johnny foreigner’ of malpractices.

But before embarking on this crusade Cameron should take a look in the mirror (assuming there is a reflection).

Has he forgotten the decades long revelations of Westminster MPs’ ‘cash for questions’, ‘cash for access’, ‘cash for honours’, and expenses fiddles, etc? Fiddles which routinely continue to surface.

Cameron would certainly like to forget having to repay the £680 claimed to remove wisteria from his Oxfordshire mansion (but not repaying the £20,000 a year claimed to pay the mortgage on his wisteria-infested country pile). With these expenses available, no wonder the PM has said he won’t take the expected 10% MPs pay rise.