FIFA’s Dirty Linen

Finally, the chickens have come home to roost. All the shady deals perpetrated by high-ranking officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the global governing body of football, are being unearthed one after the other. It has been a harvest of scams. These are not the best of times for the number one sport in the world.

Already, the unprecedented scandal in the house of football has claimed the scalp of Sepp Joseph Blatter, the diminutive sports administrator/politician who had headed the organisation since 1998. In the last couple of years, many allegations have been making the rounds about how FIFA officials had been collecting bribes.

Mr Blatter tried to calm frayed nerves by insisting that all was well in FIFA and that any proven allegation of corruption would be swiftly dealt with according to the statutes of the football ruling body. In the midst of the allegations, Blatter contested and won the 2015 presidential elections of FIFA for a record fifth time, only to resign six days later after grave disclosures of monumental corruption in FIFA on his watch.

Last month, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI) indicted 14 people in connection with allegations of wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering. The United States attorney general simultaneously unsealed the indictments and the prior guilty pleas by four football executives and two corporations. Seven FIFA executives were arrested in Zurich on the suspicion of receiving $150million in bribes and this development triggered separate criminal investigations in Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica and Switzerland.

There hasn’t been any investigation yet in Africa. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) president, Issa Hayatou, was one of the closest associates of Blatter. Hayatou, 69, has been CAF president since 1988. He too has been buffeted by various bribery allegations regarding world cup television rights and the 2022 World Cup bid, won by Qatar. The emerging picture from the activities of the top executives of the global body is that corruption had become systemic, woven into the fabric of the organisation’s operations with the complicity of most of the continental federations, especially those of Africa and the Caribbeans, under Jack Warner.

It is time for change in how football is run all over the world. Blatter’s exit should be closely followed by that of CAF’s Issa Hayatou. Agreed, Blatter gave Africa additional slots in global competitions and helped finance a number of initiatives, but that does not justify the corrupt way FIFA has been administered under him and his acolytes. The same kind of spotlight beamed on FIFA ought to be focussed on CAF and the other federations. It is time to clean the Augean stable.

FIFA’s Dirty Linen