Get Sepp
Go
Last week world football was once again plunged into total
farce.
No doubt spurred on by their unsuccessful bid to host the
2022 World Cup, it has taken a nation where football is ranked fifth in
popularity behind basketball, baseball, American football and hockey to
instigate proceedings to attempt to bring down what is clearly the most corrupt
and powerful sporting body of all time.
Armed with evidence from former FIFA executive Chuck Blazer and
the two sons of arrested former FIFA regional director Jack Warner, backed up
with a mass of evidence collected over a ten year period by Scottish investigative
journalist Andrew Jennings, plain clothed Swiss police acting on behalf of the
FBI burst into the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich at dawn to arrest seven Fifa
officials and reveal charges against seven further defendants.
Three days later Sepp Blatter was re-elected as the Godfather
of World Footballs governing body FIFA.
But, “Slow down Mr Blatter, this is may be your fifth, but
will it be your unfinished”!
Blatter has been nicknamed the ‘Teflon Man’ (nothing sticks and
he gets away with everything) by the European sports media but US Attorney
General Loretta Lynch is not known for “letting go”.
Whilst any possible further charges by U.S. officials will
depend on prosecutors finding evidence of criminal conduct which, however
slightly, involves the U.S. legal or financial/banking system hopefully successful
prosecution will encourage other countries to expose the widespread corruption
that has taken place in all of the world cup bids for decades. Switzerland is supposedly
investigating FIFA to see if any bribes were paid by Russia and Qatar to get
the 2018 and 2022 World Cup competitions – that shouldn’t take long!
England wasted 19 million pounds of FA and tax payers’ money
that would have been much better invested in grass roots non-league football, on
a bid that was doomed from the start.
All infrastructure in place =
No new stadiums needed =
No tenders for construction work =
No back handers
Investigative journalist Andrew Jennings has spent over 10
years hounding Sepp Blatter and amassing evidence of widespread corruption at
FIFA. His accusations are clear, naming dates, amounts and names, yet strangely
no one has dared prosecute and he has never been sued, but at last someone, the
FBI, is taking him seriously.
Here’s part of a documentary he did for Panarama in 2010:
This article by Simon Jenkins for the Guardian sums up this unbelievable
situation:
This week’s Fifa
exposé is widely credited to the FBI and the tough US attorney general, Loretta
Lynch. That they have brought about this crunch is welcome. It is also
humiliating for the Swiss police, who know full well what such global agencies
get up to on their turf, and for Britain’s Scotland Yard.
Institutional
corruption at Fifa has been public knowledge for a decade.
Much of the credit in
this saga should go to the dogged obsession of a single reporter, Andrew
Jennings, 71, who has traced Sepp Blatter’s footsteps for more than a decade.
Jennings worked for the Sunday Times and BBC’s Panorama. His BBC film about
Fifa corruption, The Beautiful Bung, appeared as long ago as 2006.
Since then he, and
subsequently the Sunday Times, have been merciless in pursuit of the story.
Yet such is the
potency of football money that Blatter’s cronies have been able to pocket
millions over the years, shielded from accountability by Fifa’s arcane
constitution. Occasional frowns from big sponsors, such as Visa and Coca-Cola,
have triggered spasmodic “ethics inquiries”. Grandees such as Henry Kissinger,
Lord Coe and Lord Goldsmith have been summoned to provide a veneer of
respectability to Blatter’s regime. They joined the ranks of his patsies.
Sports journalists, high on the Fifa hog, would just laugh when Fifa excused
stories about $40,000 in envelopes to voting members as “intended for
distribution to the poor”.
Serious trouble for
Fifa began only with Sunday Times revelations of a whistleblower in 2011, after
the dubious awarding of the 2018 and 2020 World Cups to Russia and Qatar. So
frantic were David Cameron and his team to “win the cup for Britain” that they
ignored all warnings of what was to come and were duly humiliated. Sport sends
politicians mad.
In 2012 the Sunday
Times revelations sparked a genuinely independent inquiry by a former US
attorney general, Michael Garcia. This report was delivered to Blatter, but he
has refused to publish it in full. It contains criticisms of dealings between
England’s Football Association and the ex-Fifa personality Jack Warner.
International sports bodies play on the celebrity, spurious patriotism, and
vast revenues from media and sponsorship rights to terrorise governments into
silence. That one of these governments should be Britain’s is a disgrace. The
FA should now have nothing to do with Fifa as long as Blatter is in charge. If
the European football union, Uefa, continues to cringe before that man, the FA
should withdraw from it, too.
©The Guardian
How much longer can Blatter and FIFA remain unaccountable and
above the law?
A Welsh Bard, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of
having the front door of his Cardiff residence kicked in by the Bluebird Mafia,
has this take on it all:
There’s nothing the matter with
Blatter,
It’s silly to criticise Sepp;
Though everything’s starting to
shatter,
As long as his wallet is fatter,
He’s unlikely to take a false
step!
Though FIFA’s finances are funny,
And have been for many a year,
For Blatter the future is sunny –
The Feds, who have followed the
money,
Have kept the old fraud in the
clear!
Though madder than hundreds of
hatters,
I’m glad he’s in charge, cos I
know
That his fraudulent management
matters,
As footy would soon be in tatters
If someone like Tan ran the show!
Here’s Andrew Jennings comments following the arrests:
Hopefully all this is just the start and Sepp Blatter will disappear down
a black hole forever:
And finally, a puzzle for you - what is the next name in this sequence:
BLATTER – BLAZER – xxxxxxx
A bit too close to comfort for my liking!
Hey Ho!
