The bidding mechanism for hosting World Cups, once a dry process involving the gathering of crusty, old men in dark rooms, became something else in 2010 as the most powerful nations on Earth jostled to use football for global influence. The vo
The vote that delivered Russia and Qatar as hosts for 2018 and 2022 was packaged as a new dawn for a game breaking fresh ground in hitherto unexplored territories. It proved to be a watershed, but not in a way any imagined. It is a story of corruption and criminality so brazen it might have been directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Russia, riding a wave of economic growth and optimism, and Qatar, seeking to fashion a new identity as a Middle East power player, saw the World Cup as a soft power tool to game the system, to change perceptions and drive positive commentary in the geo-political space, and would do whatever it took to land the prize.
Vying for position against them, among seven other bidders for the two tournaments, were England, football’s mother country, and the United States.
England, who threw Prime Minister David Cameron, Prince William and David Beckham at the bid process, were favourites to win 2018, while the United States, led by former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder, were Fifa president Sepp Blatter’s preferred choice for 2022.
Blatter even took a call from US President Barack Obama on the eve of the vote to underscore how keen America was to land the 2022 event. Blatter sounded a note of caution, advising the president that it was going to be difficult.
We are left to speculate how much Blatter knew of the scale of the scandal that would engulf his empire since he escaped indictment in the subsequent FBI investigation that exposed corruption to the tune of £120m. Their inquiry did not rest on the voting process but on corrupt practices over the previous 20 years.
However, in a separate action just three weeks after the FBI bust, Blatter and Uefa president Michel Platini were banned for eight years by Fifa’s ethics committee over a £1.35m payment made by Blatter to Platini in 2011.
Blatter claimed the cash was a backdated invoice for services rendered by Platini as a special advisor to Fifa over a four-year period from 1998. The ethics committee found otherwise, basing its judgment on mismanagement, conflict of interest, false accounting and non co-operation during the process.
Moreover the Swiss authorities earlier this month brought their own charges of fraud relating to the same payment. Blatter and Platini responded with a continued denial of any wrong doing.
The American agency acted on an initial tip by a former British spy and head of MI6’s Moscow office, Chris Steele, brought in by an English bid team concerned about rumours surrounding the process.
Their suspicions were realised a week before the vote when two members of the 24-man Fifa executive committee that would decide the outcome were suspended after being identified by a Sunday Times investigative team offering votes for money.
That would prove to be the tip of the iceberg.
Their suspicions were realised a week before the vote when two members of the 24-man Fifa executive committee that would decide the outcome were suspended after being identified by a Sunday Times investigative team offering votes for money.
That would prove to be the tip of the iceberg. Steele, who ran the Moscow office between 2006 and 2009, sourced the collusion between Russia and Qatar to the visit of a high-level delegation to Qatar in April 2010, ostensibly to discuss the development of Russian oilfields in the Yamal Peninsula.
Discussions also involved a World Cup voting pact and how to influence the votes of Fifa’s more impoverished member nations. Steele gathered enough intelligence to forewarn the English bid of the likely outcome and arm the FBI with sufficient ammunition to trigger the crime agency to act.
Once the FBI became involved the fate of the miscreants was sealed. “The Yamal Peninsula deal, I think, says it all,” said Steele in the recent Amazon Prime documentary about the affair, The Men Who Sold The World Cup. “This is how the operation was conducted and the sort of assets that Russia and Qatar brought to bear. The World Cup is bound up with the unseen way in which the world really works.”
FBI agent Michael Gaeta, who in his day job investigated mob activity in New York, likened the Russian and Qatari operations to a “Mafia-style crime syndicate”.
The investigation would expose the involvement of key Fifa officials, including former Concacaf president Jack Warner, one of five former Fifa vice-presidents indicted. It relied heavily on evidence supplied by ex-Concacaf chief executive Charles “Chuck” Blazer, who detailed how he and others received bribes in relation to football tournaments between 1996 and 2010.
The net result led to England, acknowledged as the best technical bid and presentation, leaving at the first stage after receiving just two of the 22 available votes to Russia’s nine for the 2018 nomination. Qatar claimed 11 votes to America’s three at the same stage. Though the award of the tournaments brought plenty of negative commentary surrounding the bid process, Russia and Qatar denied any wrongdoing and marched on regardless.
With a year to go Qatar can expect renewed scrutiny as the story is retold and dovetailed with a damning human rights record. A largely immigrant labour force employed in the construction of eight new stadia and connecting infrastructure has been subjected to appalling living and working conditions that has resulted in 38 deaths.
More than 6,500 workers, mostly from South East Asia, have perished in Qatar in the last decade according to Amnesty International. The gamble for Qatar, as it was with Russia, is on the power of the World Cup to wash away all negative associations. Qatar has staked all on the reputational gains that come with hosting the greatest show on earth.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3kYn3eT
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