FIFA’s leadership meets on Monday to decide the date of a vote to replace president Sepp Blatter as a corruption storm inflicts ever-worsening damage on world football.
The meeting takes place just two days after Jeffrey Webb, until May a FIFA vice president, made his first appearance in a New York court to deny charges that he accepted millions of dollars in bribes for marketing deals. He was released on a $10 million bail.
Webb is one of 14 football officials and business executives facing charges in the United States. He was one of seven FIFA officials detained in a raid on a Zurich hotel ahead of the world body’s congress in May. Two days later Blatter was reelected to a fifth term but within four more days he announced he would organise a new election.
The 79-year-old Swiss, the most powerful figure in sport by many counts, is to announce a date for a new election after Monday’s executive committee meeting. The vote will be held in Zurich sometime between December this year and February 2016.
Following some ambiguous comments in media interviews, Blatter will be pressed to make clear that he is standing down. He did not use the word “resign” when he announced that a new election would be held.
FIFA also faces mounting pressure to quickly start reforms and Blatter is expected to announce what measures could be proposed to the special election congress.
Top sponsors, such as Coca Cola and McDonald’s, have called for radical changes in the way the multi-billion dollar world body is run after many years of scandal and doubts cast on the way the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were awarded to Russia and Qatar respectively.
The US Senate also debated the FIFA scandal this week, highlighting the extent of the world football body’s tarnished reputation.
Coca Cola said in a letter to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) that it has called for an independent commission chaired by an “eminent” person to undertake reforms, the confederation said.
Sponsor pressure
“We are calling for this approach out of our deep commitment to ethics and human rights and in the interest of seeing Fifa succeed,” said the letter.
ITUC, which has put the spotlight on the conditions of migrant workers in Qatar, has called for a figure such as former UN secretary general Kofi Annan to head a reform commission.
Fast food giant McDonald’s said it has called for FIFA to make “meaningful changes to restore trust and credibility with fans and sponsors alike”.
“It is now time for the other sponsors to take a stand against corruption and put the game back on track,” ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow said.
The Transparency International advocacy group has also called for FIFA’s reforms to be handled by an independent body.
Blatter could announce that measures such as limits on terms for FIFA executive members and greater disclosure of salaries of top officials will be voted at the Congress.
However, critics say this will not be enough to ease the storm.
Even FIFA’s existing ethics committee called this week for greater powers to improve transparency in its dealings. It wants to be able to name officials accused of misconduct and to give more details on why a decision was taken.
FIFA scandal timeline
Key dates in the world football corruption scandal ahead of FIFA’s decision on Monday when to hold a new presidential election:
- December 2, 2010: FIFA awards the 2018 World Cup to Russia — with England last in the vote — and the 2022 tournament to Qatar ahead of the United States, South Korea and Australia. A FIFA evaluation report had said a World Cup in Qatar in June-July would be a “potential health risk for players, officials, the FIFA family and spectators”. Six FIFA executive committee members were suspended one month before the vote following a report by British newspaper the Sunday Times that they offered to sell World Cup votes for cash.
- June 1, 2011: Sepp Blatter is returned for fourth term as president and vows a reform agenda. FIFA had launched an inquiry into alleged illegal payments one month before his election. On June 23, FIFA banned Mohamed bin Hammam, a former FIFA president from Qatar, for life for misconduct. After appealing to the international sports arbitration court and then being suspended again, Hamman resigns all positions in December 2012.
- April 30, 2013: The FIFA ethics committee says Joao Havelange and former executive committee members Ricardo Teixeira and Nicolas Leoz accepted illegal payments from collapsed sports marketing company ISL. Blatter is cleared of any misconduct.
- May 6, 2013: FIFA’s ethics committee suspends Chuck Blazer, former general secretary of CONCACAF, for ethics breaches. Blazer had by then been working undercover for US anti-corruption investigators for two years.
- December 17, 2014: Former US attorney Michael Garcia resigns as head of FIFA’s investigatory body in protest at the handling of his report into corruption. A summary released by Hans Joachim Eckert, head of FIFA’s adjudicatory chamber, cleared Russia and Qatar of any wrongdoing in their World Cup bids and said there should be no new vote. Garcia said the summary gave “incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions” in his full report.
- May 27, 2015: Police raid a Zurich hotel on the eve of a FIFA Congress and arrest seven top football officials including two FIFA vice presidents. The seven are among 14 people wanted in the United States where Attorney General Loretta Lynch said an investigation had uncovered decades of bribery in world football amounting to more than $150 million. Federal racketeering charges are unveiled and FIFA executive members accused of taking bribes from sports marketing companies and buying and selling votes for South Africa to get the 2010 World Cup.
- May 29, 2015: The 79-year-old Blatter is reelected for a fifth term as FIFA president, beating Prince Ali bin Al Hussein by 133 votes to 77 in the second round of voting. “I’m not perfect. Nobody is perfect. But we will do a good job together,” he told the Congress.
- June 2, 2015: Just four days after his election triumph — but with the corruption storm still roaring — Blatter says he will organise a new election to choose a new president. “I don’t feel I have a mandate from the entire world of football,” Blatter said of his stunning change of heart.
- July 15, 2015: Switzerland hands over Jeffrey Webb, one of the seven detained FIFA suspects, to the United States. The deposed FIFA vice president and president of CONCACAF, the North and Central American football confederation, is accused of taking bribes for television contracts for football tournaments. He made his first court appearance in New York on Saturday.
