Corruption within FIFA.......surely not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/32895057

Let's hope Blatter gets his comeuppance too.

He's not being charged but let's hope that others spill their guts trying to lessen their own charges.

Seems like Blatter is throwing all his cronies under a bus in a bid to show himself as a "clean" FIFA..

Just confirmed by FIFA. Criminal charges have been brought against unnamed individuals with regards to bribes and corruption during the 2018/22 World Cup bid.

3 individuals have been named. 2 still work for FIFA and one (Jack Warner) has left.

blueboy wrote:Just confirmed by FIFA. Criminal charges have been brought against unnamed individuals with regards to bribes and corruption during the 2018/22 World Cup bid.

Would this be the same corruption that the independent lawyer was brought in to investigate and then he was dismissed and discredited because they didn't like the findings?

I bet these guys weren't going to vote for Blotto...

This is unbelievable...listening to the statements, the arrests, the charges......

And still, we hear from FIFA's spokesman who is a walking contradiction:

 - this is bad news for FIFA's reputation
 - this is good news for FIFA
 - the election will go ahead on Friday
 - the 2018/22 WC's will stay in Russia and Qatar
 - we knew nothing about this
 - Sep Blatter has nothing to do with this

These were statements from his press conference this morning.

The persons arrested have been giving evidence for 2 years to the FBI. He's been using a key fob to record meetings.

And FIFA think they can:

a) go ahead with elections
b) go ahead with the 2018/22 WC after 14 charges of corruption, fraud, money-laundering by FIFA officials.

Any other industry, the top CEO etc would be forced to resign - end of. He can't possibly use the "it's nothing to do with me" excuse. It's under his watch.

So, nearly $150m have swapped hands for bribes to allow advertising/tv deals for the past 17 years. So, where do the likes of the FIFA sponsors - Coca Cola etc stand with this?

These arrests are only the tip of the iceberg..it seems they're all singing to the FBI, which means they will probably be going for the big fish in the days to come. Blatter being the main one.

Great news for football....at last, Teflon will finally lose his non-stickability.

Even Greg Dyke has come out and said "if the election goes ahead, we'll be voting for Prince Ali"

blueboy wrote:Any other industry, the top CEO etc would be forced to resign - end of. He can't possibly use the "it's nothing to do with me" excuse. It's under his watch.

Most CEOs jump before the full extent is known to the public, taking a nice golden handshake with them.  It's rare a CEO is completely unaware of the corruption going on under their noses and that tends to be because they were a feckless twat and should just go anyway.

This, hopefully, is his last stab at trying to walk away unscathed.  The election coming means he has the option to "graciously step aside" before he's either muscled out by the FBI or advised to jump by his lawyers.  That's the only reason he's saying it should go ahead and that's precisely the reason why it shouldn't.

As for the upcoming World Cups, well, he was bound to stand by the decision, seeing as that's what he's been doing all along.  To u-turn now would be tantamount to an admission of guilt.

It's all to do with saving his reputation.  Or at least, what's left of it.

It's all to do with saving his reputation.
.....................


Think he lost that about 5-10 years ago.


Prince Ali would be well advised to step aside and not go up against him. That'd send a message to FIFA, Blatter and the FBI, that he wants no part of a corrupt regime as it stands.


That will leave Blatter free to hang himself, because there is no way the FBI will accept that Blatter knew nothing about it, or wasn't somehow involved.


I didn't realise that 'bribes' are legal in Switzerland! Unbelievable. 


It's the fact that the conspirators used $ to trade in, why the FBI got involved....guess their greed upon greed for a universal currency and favourable exchange rate will be their undoing.


Bet they're singing like larks to the FBI right now...and Blatter's name will end up in the Oxford Dictionary it'll be used that much in the coming weeks.

UEFA have called for Friday's FIFA election to be postponed.

Guess Pratini is smelling blood and going for the kill.

We'll end up with one twat being replaced by another...

Seems like the massive festering boil is ready to burst.  Should have heard Tommy Smith on BBC America having a right good go at FIFA.  Had to laugh.  Hope they nail them to the wall including their joke of a President who seems to know nothing about it

This is Putin's stance on FIFA and the USA....one corrupt Dictator on another:



In Russia, Reuters report that President Vladimir Putin has accused the US of meddling outside its jurisdiction:

“This is yet another blatant attempt (by the United States) to extend its jurisdiction to other states,” Putin said. He added the arrests were a “clear attempt” to prevent the re-election of Fifa head Sepp Blatter and that he had Russia’s backing.

He may have a point, but who cares now?

2 points:

1 - the ONLY reason that the USA got involved - and had the opportunity to get involved, is that the bribes were changing hands in $.

2 - Clearly, it's nothing to do with the re-election of Blatter. Didn't Walter De Gregorio state that Blatter knows nothing about corruption and bribes and that FIFA initiated the investigation?

Visa, McDonalds and Hyundai now threatening to pull out of sponsorship deals unless FIFA clean up it's act.

Wonder if any of these major companies are implicated over the TV advertising deals?

Aren't Nike implicated in the Brazil team sponsorship deal?

Maybe City can use that as leverage to bounce them out of our kit deal and get a decent package from someone else instead?

Can't see us dropping Nike - maybe renegotiating the deal under the threat of pulling out - IF they are found guilty.

Coca Cola are now reviewing their association as well.

South African WC now showing that $6.5m worth of bribes were given for that tournament.

It can only mean one thing:

1-Qatar possibly bribed officials
2-Russia possibly bribed officials

No surprise that CAF have come out and supported Blatter by saying the election should go ahead!

If EVER, there will be evidence of corruption, the African football Federation will be found out. Blatter has pretty much based his Presidency around Africa, Asia and S America....maybe that's where the FBI should be looking if they want to nail Blatter...if they aren't already.

Washington Post ✔@washingtonpost
The human toll of FIFA’s corruption, in one chart http://wapo.st/1ewGBSR

See what I mean?

Inside World Football reports further African backing for the embattled Fifa president, with Guinea-Bissau FA president Manuel Nascimento Lopes describing the “conspiracy” against Blatter as “blasphemy”.

England should be given the 2018 World Cup instead of Russia, the former Uefa president Lennart Johansson has said.
Johansson, who lost the 1998 Fifa presidential election to Sepp Blatter, says the 2018 and 2022 World Cup awards should be reviewed in the light of the new corruption charges.
Johansson, 85, speaking after seven Fifa officials including two vice-presidents were arrested by police in Zurich for extradition to the USA, told the Swedish newspaper Sportbladet: “I expect they will reconsider the [World Cup] decisions. Blatter himself has said that the decision to go east wasn’t proper. I am sure the initiative will now be taken to make a new decision.
“England haven’t had it since 1966 and it’s considered ‘the motherland of football’, whatever we might think. They are worthy of the attention.”


He added: “I’m not surprised at what is happening. Blatter will obviously ensure that he wins the election in his own way. I think it’s unfortunate that the world’s biggest sporting movement has such a leader at the top, I really do.”
The Russia 2018 organising committee head, Alexey Sorokin, insisted he was not concerned about the criminal investigation into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and said there was no point in even discussing the idea of a revote for the tournaments – something Fifa has also ruled out.
He told Sky Sports News: “We have repeatedly stated that we’re not afraid of any investigation. We cooperated with the investigation that was going on for about two years which was headed by Mr [Michael] Garcia. We submitted all the facts, all the papers, we submitted our testimonies – we did everything the process wanted us to do. We don’t know what else we can contribute to that.
“We repeatedly said the process was transparent and that we’re not concerned with any investigations. It’s just strange there’s a chance to go through the same thing again, where everything was seemingly closed.”
Asked if he was worried about a revote, he added: “No, because we are so deep in the preparation, we’ve done so much. Our government, our country, has done so much already for the preparation of an excellent World Cup, I don’t even want to discuss it with anyone.”
On Blatter’s future, he said: “We wish the current president all the success in the elections.”
Blatter is not attending Thursday morning’s Fifa medical conference in Zurich, as he was originally scheduled to do, and nor is he expected to attend the meeting of Uefa’s member association heads after that, a Fifa spokesman said.
Fifa’s chief medical officer, Jiri Dvorak, said Blatter sent his apologies at being unable to attend the medical conference.
Dvorak told delegates: “President Blatter apologises for not being able to come today because of the turbulence you have probably followed in the media.
“He said he has to fulfil his duties in the management of the situation which is probably more important than to come to us, so he sends his sincere apologies.”

Are these the same Russians who 'leased' their IT equipment and wiped all their emails?

Topdawg wrote:Are these the same Russians who 'leased' their IT equipment and wiped all their emails?

Surely not!  These Russians are a completely different lot, who are as honest as the day is long, think Martin Luther King was spot on and are in full and vocal support gay marriage.

No, wait, I'm confusing them with somewhere else that's cold and has a funny accent.

I still find it utterly hilarious how they're still adamant they complied with everything when all the awkward questions were met with the response, "Er, our IT leasing company has the computers back and they deleted everything."  And now they've built half the infrastructure, they're shitting themselves at the prospect of having it swiped from under their feet and handed to us, who didn't cheat or bribe anyone despite the protestations of Septic Bastard himself.  I mean, come on, how can anyone say David Beckham was involved in subterfuge?  He wouldn't have a clue!

I think we may have pressed the flesh a bit and there would have been some nodding and winking, but not anywhere near the scale of some of the others.

Oh, I dare say there's been a few dinners, perhaps the odd expensive trinket.  But we're talking millions of dollars worth of bribes here.  That's a lot more than a few gold Rolexes and a posh meal at the Savoy.

Wasn't the ONLY furore when the 'very heavily edited FIFA (independent) report' was released - about us contributing to setting up some footballing academies in Trinidad and sending an England football squad there to play a friendly?

As for the watches - didn't our delegates give them straight back, when some said "no way"?

It now seems David Gill has come out and said he will stand down as a Vice President if Blatter is re-elected.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter is to press ahead with his bid for a fifth term as the head of football’s scandal-hit world governing body, rebuffing a personal plea for him to quit from the head of the game in Europe.
Uefa, European football’s governing body, ruled out seeking a postponement of Friday’s election and will instead back Blatter’s challenger, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan.
Blatter made his decision to stay after a series crisis meetings at Fifa HQ with representatives of the six regional football confederations. He rejected a face-to-face demand from the president of Uefa, Michel Platini, for his resignation.
“I asked him to resign: enough is enough, Sepp. He listened to me but he told me it is too late,” Platini told a news conference in Zurich. Platini said he was “disgusted” and “sickened” by the scandal gripping the organisation.

Blatter’s determination to press ahead with the vote comes despite pressure from major sponsors. The British government called on Blatter to quit, but the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, denounced the US-led investigation that led to the arrest of Fifa officials in a dawn raid on their hotel in Zurich on Wednesday.
In total nine serving and former officials and five sports media and promotions executives were charged over bribes totalling more than $150m (£100m) allegedly made over 24 years. A separate Swiss investigation has been launched into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.
Following a meeting of all 54 Uefa members on Thursday, it emerged that former Manchester United chief executive David Gill has vowed to relinquish his seat as vice president of Fifa if Blatter wins Friday’s election.
Gill, a board member of Uefa and and the English Football Association (FA), was applauded when he said he would not take up the seat he was due to inherit from Jim Boyce after Friday’s Fifa Congress.
Platini, who had earlier met Blatter to ask him to stand down in the wake of Wednesday’s arrests, told delegates the confederation needed to unite in support of Blatter’s challenger, Prince Ali.
Most of Uefa’s members will back Ali in Friday’s election, though some, including Russia and Spain, will remain staunch backers of the incumbent.


Fifa crisis: Visa sponsorship threat compounds calls for Blatter to resign

 
Read more


Prince Ali is understood to have told the Uefa delegates that he believed he had the support of more than 60 associations outside Europe, which would give him more than enough backing to take the contest to a second round. Ali or Blatter would need a two-thirds majority of the 209 votes to win in the first round and a simple majority thereafter.
One Uefa source said that when Platini, a former supporter of Blatter, personally asked the president to stand down he told him that he would not but that he might have considered it if he had been asked earlier.
Michael van Praag, the Dutch FA president who stood down from the race to succeed Blatter last week before Wednesday’s arrests, said Uefa had decided against a boycott of the vote on Friday because that would guarantee Blatter a victory.
John Delaney, chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, said: “David Gill stood up and said he won’t take up his seat – that was the big thing. I think it was very brave and very honest of him and there was a good round of applause. People thought: ‘That’s a man of honour.’ 
“From his own personal perspective he doesn’t want to serve under Blatter and you have to respect that position. There wasn’t a vote taken but Michel Platini will tell you Uefa is unified. Whether all 53 transfer their votes over I don’t know – I think one or two will be lost along the way.”
In London, the UK government’s sports minister called on Blatter to quit. John Whittingdale, the culture, media and sport secretary, said the “deeply flawed and corrupt organisation” needed a change of leadership. A spokesman for the prime minister, David Cameron, said he “associated himself fully” with the comments.
Whittingdale told parliament the UK government would write to other European sports ministers, setting out its concerns and seeking their support. The UK will make information available to US prosecutors and examine the allegations to see whether British laws had been broken, he added.


David Cameron backs demands for Sepp Blatter to quit

 
Read more


The prime minister’s spokesman was asked whether Cameron thought the next World Cup should take place in Russia. “I understand that many England fans were disappointed that England’s bid hadn’t been successful,” he said. “You know that the prime minister was one of them. He was out there along with others of course trying to get a successful England bid at that time.”
Cameron has previously said he thought the result of the 2018 World Cup bidding process was “sorted” in advance, with England’s bid team misled by Fifaexecutives who pledged support then voted for rivals. The prime minister told the Sun he had been left frustrated by the experience in 2010, which he had previously described as “murky”.
Speaking on Russian television, Putin said that the whole affair “looks very strange”, suggesting that it had been engineered by the US to block Blatter’s re-election.
“They are accused of corruption – who is? International officials. I suppose that someone broke some rules, I don’t know. But definitely, it’s got nothing to do with the USA. Those officials are not US citizens. If something happened it was not in the US and it’s nothing to do with them.
“It’s another clear attempt by the USA to spread its jurisdiction to other states. And I have no doubt – it’s a clear attempt not to allow Mr Blatter to be re-elected as president of Fifa, which is a great violation of the operating principles of international organisations.”
Fifa sponsors including Adidas, Visa and Coca-Cola are calling for the body to reform its practices. Visa issued a statement on Wednesday expressing its “disappointment and concern with Fifa”. It said that unless football’s world governing body rebuilds a corporate culture with “strong ethical practices” at its heart, “we have informed them that we will reassess our sponsorship”.
The credit card company’s contract with Fifa is worth at least $25m a year.
Coca-Cola said: “This lengthy controversy has tarnished the mission and ideals of the Fifa World Cup and we have repeatedly expressed our concerns about these serious allegations.”
South Korean firm Hyundai Motor Company, the sole Asian Fifa partner for the 2018 World Cup to be held in Russia, said it was extremely concerned. Anheuser-Busch InBev, whose Budweiser brand is a sponsor of the 2018 World Cup, said: “We expect all of our partners to maintain strong ethical standards and operate with transparency.”
McDonald’s, meanwhile, said it was monitoring the situation.

And from today:

“Tomorrow, the congress, we have the opportunity to begin on the long and difficult road to rebuilding trust. We must earn it back through the decisions we make, the expectations we place on each other and the way we behave individually.”


“The next few months will not be easy for Fifa. I’m sure more bad news may follow. But it is necessary to begin to restore trust in our organisation. Let this be the turning point.”



 What a cunt.

blueboy wrote:Sound familiar? “We are going to put Fifa’s ship back on the right course, in clear, transparent waters. We will need some time, we cannot do it from one day to the next, but our pyramid is intact because the foundation is solid, just as solid as our game.”
Nope, not something Blatter said today, but something he said following his re-election as president in 2011.

But... Doesn't this sort of suggest that he DID know something fishy was going on at FIFA even then?  So how has he got the chops to sit there and lie about knowing nothing of corruption when he alluded to it four years ago?

My bullshit detector is overheating from all of this.  And I'm sure mine isn't the only one.

Interesting how Platini is now trying to distance himself from all of this, though.  It's almost as though he's trying to throw a veil over his own guilty conscience...

Well Platini did vote for Blatter in 2011....

As for his comments and those of his media representative - it's all comical. They contradict themselves time and time again...and I'm sure the FBI are just wanting him to keep digging!

Did Pratter just make a full admission here?

If people want to do wrong, they will also try to hide it.
“Football cannot be the exception to the rule, that is our responsibility at Fifa, and we will co-operate if anyone is involved in wrongdoing. There can be no place for corruption of any kind.

They were all coming out in support of Sepp Blatter. Vladimir Putin, those upstanding gentlemen from the Confederation of African Football — truly, he only needed Islamic State to immolate an unbeliever in his honour and FIFA’s president would have had the full set.
Meanwhile, for some of us, a truly remarkable sight. Michel Platini as the good guy. UEFA’s president making a public stand that could, one day, effect positive change in world football.
UEFA will back Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein of Jordan in the vote for FIFA president and, if that fails — as seems likely — Platini will instigate a discussion that could remove UEFA from world football. This may be the crisis that makes Blatter’s position untenable. 
Not throughout the rest of the game. Those discredited Blatter cronies at CAF, for instance, are arrogant enough to think a World Cup could go ahead without Europe. But the sponsors wouldn’t fall for it. 
Those with kit and soft drinks and lifestyles to sell know where the money is. Take the European market away and the World Cup is dead commercially. And if the World Cup dies in 2018 it takes Blatter with it.
There is a long way to go yet. Platini is not in favour of UEFA’s secession. He knows the decision would be far from unanimous. Russia, for instance, will not walk away from a World Cup it is due to host, and the country still has power and allies in the east.

The fact that Platini is even entertaining a vote on the matter, however, shows the strength of feeling among many UEFA members. This is bigger than any one executive. There is a groundswell of revulsion over FIFA and all who stand with her as the allegations of corruption grow.
Asked whether European nations could boycott FIFA events, Platini said all options were possible. ‘There may be proposals,’ he admitted. ‘But I honestly don’t wish that.’

It would certainly be a dramatic measure, with the draw for the qualifying rounds of the 2018 tournament scheduled to take place in St Petersburg on July 25. Yet the battle lines are becoming increasingly plain. A vote for Blatter is a vote for sleaze — so logic suggests anyone who sides with him must be a sleazeball.
Manuel Nascimento Lopes, president of the federation of Guinea-Bissau, described the attacks on Blatter as ‘blasphemy’ and a ‘state conspiracy’. The immediate presumption is that Lopes is behind Blatter for the darkest reasons. Unjust? Well, what other explanation could there be?
Viewed dispassionately, why would anyone support a man who is, at best, incompetent for letting so much fraud take place on his watch? It cannot be claimed that Blatter is a gifted administrator if events have spiralled out of his control. And incompetence is a resignation issue.
Of course, if Blatter is not incompetent, then he must have known criminal activity was taking place, and did not act efficiently against it. So that’s also a reason to stand down.
The third option is most serious of all: he didn’t act because he was party to it all along. And should quit, pending an inevitable knock on the door from the FBI.
FIFA claimed that the arrests of seven senior executives under suspicion of a £100million criminal conspiracy on Wednesday was good for the organisation. Self-serving rubbish, obviously. But Thursday was good for UEFA.

Europe’s governing body, for once, came out fighting — with Platini telling Blatter to quit, and David Gill then refusing to take up his newly elected position on FIFA’s executive board in protest. This was a considerable upgrade on the rhetoric and gesture politics that have been UEFA’s usual stance. It was reported this week, for instance, that FIFA had been denied their traditional 50 tickets for the Champions League final in Berlin on June 6. 
So that was UEFA’s big idea. They were going to ticket FIFA into submission? No wonder Blatter felt flameproof. At least after Platini’s Press conference he will know he faces a tougher opponent than the online booking system at Ticketmaster.
Still, if UEFA are to join ranks with the forces of good, there remains one problem. Platini voted for Qatar 2022. This was the decision that provoked the most furious denouncements of FIFA and inspired the many investigations that followed, the act that was considered so baffling it could only have been sparked by nefarious means. And Platini backed it. What would help, then, was if Platini cleaned his own house and backed the call for the Qatar vote to be rerun.
The ballot sheet did not actually contain the World Cup that will take place in 2022 — the one that has been pushed back to the middle of the European football season in November and December to avoid scorching desert temperatures.

Platini says he feels the Middle East deserves a World Cup and would vote the same way again. Fine, let him do that — and if Qatar wins a second time, having been honest about when the tournament will take place, at least we will know the count was clean.
As it stands, Platini is presenting himself as an honest broker, having been part of the decision that as good as put Blatter and his accomplices under scrutiny.

‘Enough is enough, too much is too much,’ Platini said. Indeed it is, but removing Blatter is only stage one. FIFA’s decisions poisoned the game as efficiently as bribery. The biggest ones need to be revisited; even those that found favour with Platini, now such a great convert to the cause of reform.

Bomb threat at FIFA Congress....allegedly there's been a bomb warning saying there's a bomb outside of the building....

Pratter shouldn't worry - he's bomb-proof anyway, sadly.

I personally couldn't give a fuck who wins. The thing is rotten to the core.
Just seen some odious figure glibly say " corruption is everywhere, it's part of life", and he is controlling the largest number of votes!
Somebody else referred to accusations against Blatter as 'blasphemy', that is how much these back water delegates fawn to that crook.
Europe should tell them to shove their tournament up their arse, and let the African cronies and their like preside over a worthless tournament sponsored by Lidl and Aldi.
It's a disgusting gravy train for these minor federations, and they're welcome to it.
And if Platini is the answer, then the whole thing is definitely doomed.

It went to a second vote - but Prince Ali has just pulled out and conceded to Blatter...

Guess that sent the message it was meant to.

Quite clever really.

Wonder if the FBI asked Prince Ali to go ahead with the first round vote?

If you think about it:

1 - after all the corruption surrounding Blatter, they get to see who still voted for him.

2 - nobody could say after the event if Ali pulled out of the election "I had no choice, Blatter was the only delegate. I would have voted for Ali"

3 - The FBI may be able to concentrate further investigations on the countries that still persisted in backing Blatter - asking why?

Just a theory.