SERIOUS questions remain about corruption in the contest to host the World Cup despite attempts by football's governing body to draw a line under the cash for votes scandal.
Last week Fifa took the unprecedented decision to suspend and fine six of its members who had been named in a Sunday Times investigation into World Cup bribery. The secretly recorded tapes and video passed to Fifa by this newspaper contained much wider allegations about illicit payments involving members and bidders past and present.
The allegations were unproven and therefore the individuals were not named in the newspaper. The accusations included:
- Claims from three former Fifa officials that supporters of a bid were currently offering large personal payments for votes. One said the payments were between $1m and $1.2m (£730,600 and £876,620).
- Claims of payments and "dirty tricks" by supporters of another bidding country.
- Claims that Morocco had made payments of $250,000 to secure votes at a previous World Cup contest.
- Claims that a Fifa official had been paid $1m for his vote in a previous World Cup contest.
The Sunday Times supplied the names to Fifa in our letter containing the allegations against the six members who have now been suspended.
However, it is not clear whether the Fifa ethics committee even investigated any of the claims. Sepp Blatter , the Fifa president, said on Friday that the committee's inquiries had now been "terminated".
Blatter has been anxious to play down the extent of the crisis within Fifa after the sports body decided on Wednesday to suspend the members. He claimed they were just six people in a "football family" of more than 300m. "It does not mean the whole of football is corrupt," he said.
Yet Fifa has never before been forced to suspend so many senior figures who had been at the heart of its organisation. All six were either current or former members of the 24-man Fifa executive committee, which votes on who should hold the World Cup.
They included two current members, Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti, who will now be unable to vote in the contest to hold the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which is due to take place on December 2. Adamu was filmed guaranteeing his vote to two undercover reporters after requesting £500,000 (*580,000) for a personal project. He was found to have breached article 11.1 of the Fifa code of ethics, which says "officials may not accept bribes". He was suspended for three years and fined 10,000 Swiss francs (*7,350).
Temarii was filmed asking for £1.5m for a sports academy from a reporter seeking his vote. He was not found to have violated article 11.1 but was suspended for a year and fined 5,000 Swiss francs for three other breaches of the code. One was article 3.2, which says: "Officials shall show commitment to an ethical attitude while performing their duties... and act with complete credibility and integrity."
The recording of Temarii also raised questions that remain unresolved following the ethics committee inquiry. He said two bid countries had offered his Oceania Football Confederation "huge" amounts of money - which he later said was $10m-$12m. Who were those bid committees, and were their offers investigated? The undercover reporters also spoke to former Fifa executive committee members who offered to work as fixers for a World Cup bid. They all suggested paying huge bribes to Fifa executive committee members.
They were all disciplined on Wednesday.
They are: Slim Aloulou, chairman of the Fifa dispute resolution chamber, who was suspended for two years and fined £6,300; Ahongalu Fusimalohi, general secretary of the Tonga Football Association, suspended for three years and fined £6,300; Amadou Diakite, a member of the Fifa referees committee, suspended for three years and fined £6,300; and Ismail Bhamjee, an honorary member of the Confederation of African Football, suspended for four years and fined £6,300.
On Friday, Blatter announced that a further two former Fifa executives would be punished. Michel Zen-Ruffinen, a former Fifa general secretary, and Michel Bacchini, a former tournament director, had both advised our undercover reporters on which Fifa executive committee members might take money.
The executive committee took its revenge. "The two Michels... have been declared persona non grata à la Fifa, whatever that means," said Blatter . "We have to define what that means."
So all eight officials and fixers named by this newspaper faced some sort of action. But was Fifa grateful for the evidence provided by The Sunday Times? In front of the world's media on Thursday, Claudio Sulser, a former Swiss football player turned lawyer who chairs the ethics committee, made a "personal" comment. He claimed The Sunday Times should also be criticised because it had "changed sentences" and "twisted the truth".
There were no examples given and he offered no substantiation for his accusations. When asked directly what he meant, Sulser started to talk about the video footage on our website rather than the 3,000 words written in two articles in the newspaper.
He said conversations had been taken out of context. "So, if you look at the document [video] of The Sunday Times, it lasted four minutes, more or less, and that's what everybody has in mind but we've looked at video footage of several hours," he said.
There is actually 30 minutes of video on our website and it accompanies a very detailed article. Fifa was able to view the unedited footage because this newspaper provided it to the governing body the day after the two articles were first published. Nothing has been changed. Each quotation in the newspaper was checked many times over to make sure that it is a word-perfect match for the footage.
So Sulser's comments were baffling. On Friday we asked him, through Fifa's press office, to justify the claims. He has so far failed to respond. Fifa also did not respond to our questions about the wider allegations in the tapes.
Blatter has promised reform but many doubt his sincerity in wishing to change a system that has worked so nicely for the Fifa executive committee for so many years.
Alec McGiven, director of England's unsuccessful bid to host the World Cup in 2006, blames Fifa for vote-buying. "Fifa ought to recognise that the system they adopt has a tendency to encourage this type of activity," he said. "It is a cosy club mentality in which people appear to be out for what they can get out of the voting from the bidding teams."
Reforms such as publishing how executive committee members vote would make collusion between bids much easier to spot. The ethics committee also dismissed allegations that Spain/Portugal, rival joint bidders to England for 2018, had secured seven votes by colluding with Qatar, because of lack of evidence.
Much was made last week of the potential negative impact of the scandal on England's bid but it is all speculation. Not one Fifa executive committee member has said they have changed their mind as a result of our revelations.
If the allegations were true that Spain/Portugal and Qatar had secured seven votes, England was already lagging behind in September.
Nor is it convincing that either Adamu or Temarii would have voted for England. Adamu had just returned from a hospitality trip given by England's rivals Russia when he first met our undercover reporters. A member of the Oceania executive board told the reporters that Temarii was thought to be voting for England but, in fact, a deal had been done that meant he would choose Spain. '' PEOPLE APPEAR TO BE OUT FOR WHAT THEY CAN GET FROM THE BIDDERS
