FIFA has once again been exposed as the most corrupt, morally depraved, contaminated organization wielding massive global power to determine the fate of countries by being the sole decision maker on which country gets to host the world cup. In the recent fiasco where Russia and Qatar received the most votes securing them the rights to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup, many including Australia are crying foul over the failure of FIFA to follow its own guidelines in awarding the rights to host the World Cup.
There has also been endless speculation of massive endemic corruption within the FIFA organization leading up to Vice President Jack Warner whose history of corruption and nepotism precedes him. FIFA's president, Sepp Blatter however, has dismissed some of the claims as “trivial”. In one instance when Jack Warner was investigated by FIFA to have sold some 80,000 World Cup tickets profiting by millions of dollars, he was asked to “pay back” one million to charity. Nothing more came from that although the instruction that FIFA demanded Mr Warner to pay back one million dollars would in anyone’s sound judgement amount to some sort of declaration of Mr. Warner’s guilt, but Mr Warner still holds the position of Vice President of FIFA, next in line to be the most powerful man in football.
In the voting for the 2022 World Cup, Australia who was promised at least 6-7 votes by various voting members to make it through the first round could only garner one pathetic vote. Australia’s lead bid manager Frank Lowe said Australia lost because “we played fair”. That’s where they went wrong. Australia has always been known as a nation free of corruption and the politics and corruption that FIFA envelopes itself in was obviously too high an obstacle for the “fair” bidders to compete with.
Similarly, for the 2018 World Cup bid, the USA and UK who many agreed had a far more superior bid than Russia lost out to the former Soviet state. When anyone mentions ethical, integral, free of corruption, Russia and Qatar could not be furthest from the mind and unfortunately, this has fuelled even further speculation that there was something serously wrong with the integrity of the whole process.
Look, maybe FIFA did vote according to their own guidelines. Maybe they did want to further the sport by introducing it to the biggest country in the world (land size) in Russia and they wanted to further the sport in the Middle East by giving it to Qatar. Maybe all that is true and they had good intentions which were misconstrued by so many people. Maybe all that is true, however what is also facts is that FIFA has had a history of corruption amongst its ranks and a history of sweeping all the allegations under the carpet. From the former President Jacques Havalanche to Jack Warner to many others in the committee, allegations upon allegations of misconduct have been alleged and FIFA hasn’t done much to bring forth proper independent investigations. For some unknown reason, FIFA President Sep Blatter prefers to sweep all these allegations under the carpet. As the president, Mr Blatter must be involved at a higher level possibly, otherwise why not do a proper investigation? Even if he is completely void of corruption himself, his running of the organization by closing one eye and always brushing off suggestions that FIFA needs to explain the allegations is itself as damaging to the organization as the allegations themselves. If you want to find out more about the endemic corruption in FIFA, check out the BBC program “Panorama” who have been following up on the corruption allegations against FIFA for almost a decade. Just type in “BBC Panorama FIFA” in You Tube and you’re more than like to get the program in two parts.
In this day and age where even the perception of corruption can bring an organization down, FIFA’s high and mighty attitude that they answer to no one and any allegation of corruption can just be brushed aside is astonishing. In awarding the World Cup, FIFA has the audacity to make the host country agree to many ridiculous conditions like making the income generated by FIFA be tax exempted and because of the power it yields, many countries have no choice but to agree with the conditions for fear that their bid become unsuccessful.
Listen, FIFA needs to clean up its act because football is too big to fail. The stench after the recent voting has unfortunately brought football to its knees and left a very nasty taste to those bidding nations that believe they have been hard done by. Football will be the ultimate loser if FIFA does not clean up its act and the suggestion by some politicians to have a full and independent investigation like a Royal Commission with clear terms of reference to investigate FIFA to its core with the legal powers to launch criminal proceedings against anyone who has broken the law I think is a good suggestion.
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