lol, FIFA

[Lineker]

The two Fifa vice-presidents arrested by police in a dawn raid in Zurich have been given 90-day provisional suspensions by the ethics committee of world football’s governing body.

Juan Ángel Napout, the Paraguayan head of the South American federation, Conmebol, and Alfredo Hawit, the Honduran head of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, have been indicted by US authorities as part of an alleged conspiracy of corruption offences. Both are in custody and are fighting extradition to the US.

In imposing the 90-day suspensions, the ethics committee said in a statement: “The reason for the ban, which was based on the request of the investigatory chamber under its chairman Dr Cornel Borbely, is the indictment issued yesterday by the United States Department of Justice for charges of racketeering, conspiracy and corruption.”

[Lineker]

The FBI is investigating the role of Sepp Blatter in the $100m ISL scandal after the suspended Fifa president appeared to be implicated by his predecessor, according to a BBC Panorama documentary to be screened on Monday night (20:30). In a letter obtained by the FBI, and forwarded to Swiss authorities with a request for help, the former Fifa president João Havelange appears to say: “Mr Blatter had full knowledge of all activities,” and was “always apprised to them”.

The FBI’s request was sent before the dramatic May arrests that sparked Blatter’s downfall and a full-blown crisis at world football’s governing body.

In a covering note to the Swiss authorities the FBI requests information from an earlier Swiss investigation into the ISL scandal, which involved the payment of $100m in backhanders by the now defunct sports marketing company.

The note adds: “Among other things, the prosecutor is investigating Havelange’s statements implicating Blatter and appearing to exculpate Havelange’s son-in-law, [Ricardo] Teixeira, in the ISL matter.”

In the letter from Havelange, seemingly written after a 2010 court case in Zug, Switzerland, related to the affair, he appears to claim that payments to him were above board. He writes: “During the period of time in which I was Fifa president, Mr Joseph Blatter was the secretary general, I maintained commercial relationships with sports marketing companies which were under my economic control, and, as a result of these relationships, I received remuneration, in accordance with Fifa regulations, and this was the object of a judicial proceeding settlement in Switzerland without acknowledgement of any guilt.

“I clarify that all expenses for the mentioned proceeding, including attorneys, were paid by Fifa. I emphasise that Mr Joseph Blatter had full knowledge of all activities described above and was always apprised to them.”

The letter, obtained by the BBC, has been seen by the Guardian. Blatter’s lawyers failed to respond to a request for comment when the BBC contacted them.

It was the same Panorama team, led by the veteran Fifa investigator Andrew Jennings, that in 2010 revealed the existence of the list of bribes paid by ISL.

Havelange finally resigned from his position as the honorary Fifa president in 2013 after an ethics committee report confirmed how he and Teixeira, his former son-in-law, had taken a series of bribes over an eight-year period.

At the time, the report found Blatter had been “clumsy” rather than “criminal” in returning a $1m bribe meant for Havelange that crossed his desk.

Blatter insisted he did not know the money was a bribe. Before 2004, accepting inducements of that kind was not illegal under Swiss law.

Teixeira was one of three former heads of the Brazilian FA named among an additional 16 people charged with corruption offences by the US Department of Justice last week.

Both US and Swiss prosecutors continue to probe decades of wrongdoing among Fifa executives. Blatter is under investigation by the Swiss over a £1.3m “disloyal payment” to the suspended Uefa president, Michel Platini, and speculation continues to surround his status in the US probe.

The US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, said last week she would continue to pursue wrongdoers as she unsealed an updated indictment that alleged more than $200m had been received in bribes and kickbacks.

The programme, to be broadcast on Monday night at 8.30pm, is also told by the former FA chairman Lord Triesman that the successful Qatar 2022 bid cost £117m. Gary Lineker, part of England’s 2018 World Cup bid team, laments the rotten state of world football governance.

“It makes me feel nauseous at the levels of corruption in a sport that has been a huge part of my life and is a huge part of many people’s lives right around the world,” he says. “And part of me hopes that with everything being so clearly rotten, that we can come out and somehow start again and correct it.”

[Lineker]

On 11/22/2015, 12:16:41, Rich said:

Not really sure what it is going to properly reveal, but here is a documentary tomorrow night on Ch5 in the UK about Blatter

http://www.channel5.com/shows/sepp-blatter-exposed-the-fall-of-fifa/episodes/sepp-blatter-exposed-the-fall-of-fifa

Monday night 9pm

1

There's a hour-long special Panorama with Andrew Jennings on BBC One tonight, from half 8.

David Beckham has branded Fifa’s corruption scandals “disgusting” but believes the 2018 and 2022 World Cups should not be moved.

Fifa has been in crisis since May when 14 executives were indicted as part an FBI investigation into corruption and last week 16 more officials were charged by US authorities.

Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter, and the Uefa president, Michel Platini, are each serving a 90-day suspension while a Swiss criminal investigation into the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar was launched this year.

Beckham, who was part of the FA delegation aiming to win the 2018 bid, was asked whether the arrests and the prospect of a new president in 2016 meant Fifa was turning a corner.

“No – they are just hitting the bend,” Beckham told the Christmas issue of Radio Times. “There’s a lot still to be done. It’s such a mess that it’s going to take a while to sort out.

“For me to see the game, the way it’s been treated and looked after, is devastating. It’s disgusting.”

There have been repeated calls for the 2018 and 2022 elections to be re-run, with 16 of the 24 committee members serving at the time of the bids either already punished for misconduct or currently under investigation.

The Qatar tournament in 2022 has come under particular scrutiny, given the tournament will need to be played in the winter due to the high risk to players and fans from temperatures that can reach 50 degrees Celsius in summer.

It has been proposed that the competition will instead start in November and, despite the difficulties, Beckham insists “they’ll make it work”.

“Whether it’s corrupt or not, those countries have been chosen,” Beckham said. “People need to get behind that. It’s all about bringing football to new countries. I think they should stick with it.”

Beckham is also working to spread the game’s global appeal and is pressing ahead with plans to create a Major League Soccer franchise in Miami.

A site for the franchise’s stadium has been approved by Major League Soccer after Beckham’s team of investors acquired land in Miami’s Overtown neighbourhood last week.

The former Manchester United midfielder says they are “on course” to enter the league in 2018 and is confident “a couple of big players” can be lured to the club.

“Someone sent me a message yesterday asking if it had all fallen through. No,” Beckham said. “We’re not telling everyone what’s happening constantly but it’s all coming good.”

[Lineker]

Michel Platini, the Uefa president provisionally banned over a £1.35m “disloyal payment” from his Fifa counterpart Sepp Blatter, has failed in his bid to have his interim suspension lifted.

The Frenchman had hoped to be able to attend this weekend’s Euro 2016 draw in Paris after applying to the court of arbitration for sport against his original 90 day provisional ban.

But the CAS ruled that the decision by Fifa’s ethics committee should stand ahead of a final ruling next week on the facts of the case.

The CAS did, however, caution Fifa against extending the provisional suspension beyond the current 90 days. Under its rules, the ethics committee could have added an extra 45 days to the ban, but the CAS panel said this would have been unfair to Platini. In the event, the argument is a moot one because the ethics committee has promised to deliver its verdict before Christmas.

Platini’s lawyer, Thibaud d’Alès, said his client was satisfied with the ruling. “Michel Platini notes with satisfaction that CAS partially granted his request when it demanded that Fifa not extend his ban. In substance, he is confident that his case is solid.”

Both Platini and Blatter will next week attend a hearing in front of ethics committee judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, who will rule on whether the lifetime bans requested against both men by the investigatory chamber should be applied.

The interim 90-day suspensions were announced in September after Swiss police opened a criminal investigation against Blatter and questioned Platini as a “person between a witness and a suspect” over a £1.35m payment in 2011.

Both parties said they had a “gentleman’s agreement” to pay the money as part of a deal over the remuneration Platini would receive to work as an adviser to the Fifa president between 1998 and 2002.

Platini’s lawyers had hoped that a document they unearthed showing that a salary of 1m Swiss Francs a year was rumoured to have been agreed at the time.

But the case made by the investigatory chamber is understood to argue that Blatter and Platini struck a corrupt bargain and that the £1.35m payment was made in return for something.

It was made shortly before the Uefa Congress in Paris in 2011, at a time when Blatter was seeking Platini’s support for the Fifa presidency in the face of a challenge from the Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam.

Platini and Blatter have accepted there was no written contract for the payment, said to be related to work undertaken by the Frenchman as a special adviser to Blatter between 1998 and 2002, but have denied wrongdoing. Platini has claimed Blatter told him at the time that Fifa could not afford to pay him, despite the governing body making £78m over that four-year cycle, and did not want to break its wage structure.

Both Blatter and Platini have said they believed their verbal contract was legal under Swiss law. However, Swiss law places a five-year time limit on such payments. The fact that the payments did not feature in Fifa’s accounts is believed to form part of the case against them.

In addition to the alleged corruption, the charges are based on four other potential breaches: mismanagement, conflict of interest, false accounting and non-cooperation with the ethics committee. The Swiss attorney general is investigating whether the £1.35m constitutes what is termed a “disloyal payment”|.

The fate of the two men who were once the most powerful in world football has become part of the wider corruption crisis swirling around Fifa in a year when whole swathes of its senior executives have been arrested or suspended.

The ethics committee will meet next week in Zurich, with a decision expected to be announced any time from 19 December onwards. Even if both men escape a life ban, they are expected to be handed hefty suspensions of six to seven years.

While both men would have the last recourse of a further appeal to CAS, a lengthy ban would almost certainly signal the end of Platini’s hopes of re-entering the race to succeed Blatter.

And it would bring the curtain down in ignominious fashion on Blatter’s 41 years at Fifa, robbing him of the chance to leave in the manner of his choosing at next February’s extraordinary congress.

[Szumi]

Investigators are anticipating Blatter and Platini each getting bans of at least 6-7 years for conflict of interest, according to a report on ESPNFC.

[stokeriño]

Back just in time to enjoy the Qatari World Cup!

[Lineker]

 

Quote

Sepp Blatter has likened the Fifa ethics committee process that could lead to him being banned from football for years to the Spanish inquisition in a letter that itself appears to breach the terms of his suspension.

The Fifa president had resolved to carry on his tradition of writing an end of year letter to all 209 members of the governing body despite being provisionally suspended for 90 days over a £1.35m “disloyal payment” to Michel Platini, the suspended Uefa president.

Although it is not on Fifa-headed paper, it is understood that in writing to all 209 FAs around the world Blatter has breached the terms of his provisional ban from all football-related activities. His spokesman, Klaus Stöhlker, said Blatter was unconcerned about whether he had technically breached the terms of his ban. “He is more concerned about the fairness of the hearings and the outcome,” he said.

In the letter Blatter is understood to have written: “Although I have been suspended I am not isolated and will certainly not be silenced.”

As he prepares to face the ethics committee on Thursday, with the investigatory arm having requested a life ban but a suspension of six to seven years seen as more likely, Blatter is understood to have written that he was “bewildered by the insinuations and allegations brought against me by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee”.

The 79-year-old Swiss, who this year resolved to stand down as Fifa president following the US indictment of what prosecutors described as a “World Cup of fraud”, insisted the process by which Platini received the payment nine years after it was originally due as part of a gentleman’s agreement between the pair was above board.

“However, the way in which the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee has communicated on the current proceedings, demanded the maximum penalty and reinforced public prejudgment has reached a tendentious and dangerous dimension,” he added. “These proceedings remind me of the inquisition.”

It was Platini’s lawyer who first revealed that the investigatory arm of the ethics committee was seeking a life ban for both men over the payment, which was made in 2011 weeks before Blatter was re-elected for a fourth term.

The pair face charges including corruption, conflict of interest and noncooperation. Blatter’s case will be heard on Thursday with Platini’s following on Friday, with a decision expected on Monday next week.

Blatter also says in the letter, seen by the Guardian that he has always “faced up to the challenges with honesty, respect and fair play”. He says he has maintained the values passed down to him by his parents: “Never accept any money which you have not earned, always pay off your debts.

“I will continue to fight for my rights – and at the end of this week, I will present my case before the adjudicatory chamber with great conviction and a strong belief in justice”.

Blatter also faces a Swiss criminal investigation over the £1.35m payment and Platini has been interviewed as “someone between a witness and an accused person”. Both men have denied wrongdoing.

In the letter, Blatter again reaffirms his innocence. “In the current case, the adjudicatory chamber of the ethics committee must pass judgment on the legality of the bill for two million Swiss francs – stemming from the 1998 agreement between Fifa and Michel Platini – and whose payment [of the remaining amount] was only requested in 2010-11,” he says.

“I can assure you that it was legal because it was based on a verbal agreement. And agreements must be adhered to. This payment was put through the full administrative process, the correctness of which was confirmed by all competent Fifa bodies – including the congress.”

 

Meanwhile, two senior officials including a former president of Honduras pleaded not guilty to US charges they took bribes in exchange for media and marketing contracts in a scandal that has rocked global football. Rafael Callejas, who was president of Honduras from 1990 to 1994 and later became president of its soccer federation, flashed a thumbs-up as he left a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. Juan Ángel Napout, a Paraguayan and former president of the South American confederation Conmebol, pleaded not guilty at a separate hearing.

[Maxx]

 

Edited December 16, 2015 by Maxx

[Colly]

No one expects the FIFA ethics committee process.

[Benji]

They do, they just don't expect them to actually do anything long term

[GhostMachine]

Well, its probably because "FIFA" and "ethics" don't belong in the same sentence.......

[Lineker]

The suspended Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, has claimed the world body’s ethics committee have dropped corruption charges against him over a £1.35m payment to Michel Platini, although the 79-year-old is still facing a lengthy ban from football on other charges.

On Sunday, the day before both he and Platini are expected to learn their fates, Swiss newspaper Blick asked Blatter about last week’s eight-hour hearing with German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert.

“The judge told me at the start ‘the corruption charges have been withdrawn,’” Blatter is reported to have said to the Swiss newspaper Blick.

Both Blatter and Platini have said they believed their verbal contract was legal under Swiss law. However, Swiss law places a five-year time limit on such payments. The fact that the payments did not feature in Fifa’s accounts is believed to form part of the case against them. In addition to the alleged corruption, the charges are based on four other potential breaches: mismanagement, conflict of interest, false accounting and non-cooperation with the ethics committee, amy of which, if proven, could lead to a substantial ban.

Ethics investigators accept that proving corruption, which carries a lifetime ban, will be difficult.

Investigators are very confident that other charges will be proved after a file running to more than 50 pages was submitted.

Sources with knowledge of the case say sanctions handed down to other Fifa officials previously provide an indication of the level of the bans faced by Platini and Blatter.

In July, Harold Mayne-Nichols, the official who headed the inspection team for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, was banned from all football-related activity for seven years for conflict of interest and breach of confidentiality.

Former Fifa vice-president Chung Mong-joon from Korea was banned for six years in October for ethics code breaches that he said related to matters such as duty of disclosure, and confidentiality.

Platini boycotted his hearing in Zurich on Friday in protest, claiming a decision already appeared to have been made. His lawyers attended, but it looks as though the Frenchman is already preparing to take the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

His slim hopes of running for the Fifa presidency on February 26 would be finally ended by any sort of a ban however. The provisional suspensions imposed on him and Blatter in October mean he has been unable to carry out any campaigning.

Blatter is unlikely to go quietly either as he faces an end to his four decades at the top of Fifa. The 79-year-old has called a news conference for Monday morning in Zurich in the same building that used to house Fifa before it moved to its new headquarters in 2006. He has already claimed in media interviews that the ethics committee has no power to remove him as president.

The 2million Swiss franc payment at the centre of the case was made to Platini in February 2011. The Frenchman and Blatter deny any wrongdoing and say the payment was honouring an agreement made in 1998 for work carried out between 1998 and 2002 when Platini worked as a technical advisor for the Fifa president.

The payment was not part of Platini’s written contract but the pair have insisted that it was a verbal agreement which is legal under Swiss law.

The timing of the payment has raised eyebrows however - it took place nine years after Platini had stopped working for Fifa, and was made while Blatter was seeking support for a fourth term as president and facing a major challenge from Qatar’s Mohamed Bin Hammam.

The payment was made less than a month after a meeting between Platini and Bin Hammam where it is understood they discussed the presidency. Two months later, Platini and UEFA’s executive committee endorsed Blatter’s candidacy. Blatter and Platini say the payment was completely unconnected with the presidential elections.

Platini has said he had not been paid the full amount agreed in 1998 because of Fifa’s financial situation at the time.

10am presser just announced.

[stokeriño]

Quote

In addition to the alleged corruption, the charges are based on four other potential breaches: mismanagement, conflict of interest, false accounting and non-cooperation with the ethics committee, amy of which, if proven, could lead to a substantial ban.

It seems to me that the charges of 'mismanagement, conflict of interest, false accounting and non-cooperation' ought to basically add up to corruption anyway, but maybe I'm too traditional in such matters.

[EddieG]

8 year bans for both of them apparently.

[Lineker]

Or not.

Sepp Blatter and the longtime Fifa president’s one-time heir apparent, Michel Platini, have been banned from football for eight years, ending the career of the former and definitively derailing the vaulting ambitions of the latter.

The Fifa ethics committee, chaired by the German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, has ruled that both men should be banned despite their protestations that they did nothing wrong when Blatter paid the Uefa president 2m Swiss francs (£1.35m) in 2011, nine years after both men claimed it was originally due.

Fifa was thrown into crisis in May when Swiss police raided the five-star Baur au Lac hotel and nine senior football officials were indicted in the US on charges including money laundering and racketeering. Last month, a further indictment followed against a further 16 individuals.

Under huge pressure, Blatter agreed to stand down in June a few days after being re-elected for a fifth term as president. Platini quickly emerged as the favourite to succeed him, much to the public chagrin of his one-time mentor.

Blatter appeared personally before the ethics committee on Thursday, protesting his innocence in a letter to all 209 Fifa members in which he likened the process to the Spanish inquisition. Platini refused to appear in person, with his lawyers conducting the nine-hour hearing before Eckert and three other judges. But the Frenchman railed against the ethics committee’s provisional 90-day suspension and complained of ulterior political motives to force him out of the race to succeed Blatter.

Neither man has been able to provide a written contract for the payment, however, or definitively explain away why it was eventually paid in 2011, a few weeks before the presidential election at a time when Blatter was facing a challenge from Mohamed bin Hammam, the Qatari who himself was ultimately banned over bribery claims. Blatter and Platini said the payment related to a period between 1998 and 2002 when the Frenchman acted as a special adviser to the Swiss. Platini has claimed Blatter told him at the time that Fifa could not afford to pay him, despite the governing body making £78m over that four-year cycle, and did not want to break its wage structure.

Both Blatter and Platini have said they believed their verbal contract was legal under Swiss law. However, Swiss law places a five-year time limit on such payments. The fact that the payments did not feature in Fifa’s accounts was believed to form part of the case against them.

In addition to the alleged corruption, the charges are based on four other potential breaches: mismanagement, conflict of interest, false accounting and noncooperation with the ethics committee. Switzerland’s attorney general is also investigating whether the 2m Swiss francs constitutes what is termed a “disloyal payment”.

Blatter has been interviewed as part of a criminal investigation against him and Platini spoken to as “someone between a witness and an accused person” under Swiss law.

The 79-year-old Blatter, who over 18 years as Fifa president and 22 before that as a senior executive had become synonymous with its culture of patronage and perks as football’s commercial income boomed, has cut a disconsolate figure in recent weeks since being provisionally suspended for 90 days.

“This is not justice. I put these people into the office, where they are now in the ethics committee and they don’t even have the courage to listen to the secretary general, Platini or me,” he said in one of many interviews he has given over the period, during which he has variously railed at the US investigators, Uefa and the British media.

Since being levered into position by the late Adidas executive Horst Dassler and João Havelange, his predecessor as president, Blatter survived a series of scandals and corruption storms. But, barring a successful appeal to the court of arbitration for sport, his long career in football is now over.

Platini’s fall from grace has been swifter still. In the wake of Blatter’s demise, the Uefa president was the most powerful man in football and swiftly emerged as the strong favourite to succeed him despite questions over his support for Qatar’s successful 2022 World Cup bid and his formerly close links to Blatter.

But the former world footballer of the year, who expected to attend this summer’s European Championship in France as Fifa president, now faces being cast from the sport that made him at the age of 60.

lol Sepp

[Benji]

[Lineker]

Sepp Blatter's adviser Klaus Stoehlker has told the Press Association that the 79-year-old will appeal against the ban. He says Blatter is ready to take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

[Lineker]

This is spectacular.

Blatter says Ethics Committee has no right to go against the President of Fifa. Despite it being set up by... him.

Quote

"I am not ashamed. I regret but I am not ashamed.

"I am ashamed about the committee's decision - and that they don't go to the evidence. I tell you they have no right to go against the president. The president of Fifa can only be relieved of his activities by the Fifa congress. 

"At the next congress, the 27 February, before the election of the new president, even suspended I am president and the president must be first relieved of his duties.

"I am a man of principles. I repeat: Never take money you have not earned, pay your debts. Now they are telling me that I tried to buy through Michel Platini, votes for the 2011 elections. No."

 

 

[MDK]

Sepp be crazy, yo 

[Benji]

32 minutes ago, Lineklaus said:

This is spectacular.

Blatter says Ethics Committee has no right to go against the President of Fifa. Despite it being set up by... him.

 

 

Probably not on the second point, but then the US is a fully realised and mostly free state, not a logistical nightmare that is engaging in literal slavery in the 21st century. It's the gold bribe that broke the camel's back you stupid fuck.