Corruption within FIFA

Luke O. Lower Sixth

The Fédération internationale de football association (FIFA), was founded on the 21st of May 1904 by seven national associations: Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. It is the largest governing body in the footballing world.

Despite being so powerful and organising and overseeing almost every aspect of football, including tournaments such as the World Cup, FIFA, rather than being an unbiased and fair organisation, has shown its true colours to be stained with ugly marks of bribery and corruption.

At the forefront of the controversies within FIFA would be their ex-president Joseph “Sepp” Blatter. He is a Swiss former football administrator who served as the eighth President of FIFA from 1998 to 2015, with a recent corruption case made public in 2015 seeing him banned from participating in any FIFA events until 2027.

Rising through the ranks from his position of general secretary in 1981, Blatter increased his power by making more African and Asian countries influential in the football sphere. On the 2nd of June 2015, just a week after the United States government indicted several former FIFA officials and sports marketing companies for bribery and money laundering , Blatter called an election for a new FIFA president, and withdrew himself from contention.

In September of the same year, criminal proceedings against Blatter were announced by the Swiss Attorney generals office regarding “criminal mismanagement… and misappropriation”. In October, Blatter was suspended alongside his other co-conspirators and top FIFA officials and was eventually ousted from his role in December. Following this in 2021, Blatter received a further 6-year ban and was fined after an investigation into bonus payments. Another main area of corruption within FIFA is regarding the hosting rights of the World Cup. The recent Qatar World Cup has not been innocent to these claims of wrongdoings. In December of 2010, Russia and Qatar were awarded rights to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup respectively, both nations had controversy surrounding their hosting bids, but Qatar was more notable.

One reason for this was an alleged “secret meeting” which took place in Paris between then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Qatars then Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani and Michel Platini, who at the time was both UEFA president and vice-president of FIFA.

At the vote, it was announced that Qatar would host the 2022 World Cup, winning 14 of the 22 executive committee votes, including Platini’s. The controversial decision was met with surprise and suspicion and thoughts of bribery were never held far from this decision.

The announcement that the World Cup would be held in winter to avoid the summer heat of Qatar, further indicated the lack of prior preparation and thought going into awarding the rights to Qatar. A year later in May of 2011, a former member of the Qatari bid, Phaedra Al-Majid, solidified suspicions by his claims that money was paid to members of FIFA’s executive committee in order to buy votes. However, this was denied hastily by the Qatar 2022 bid team, claiming their name had been “dragged through the mud for no reason”. In the same year, FIFA executive committee member, the Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam, was found guilty of bribery and banned from all international and national football for life.

The most concerning part of the Qatar 2022 World Cup however, was the tragic disregard for human rights in regards to the construction of the World Cup’s infrastructure and subsequent loss of human life, with this first being uncovered in 2013 by Amnesty International, releasing a report of “an alarming level of exploitation”.

Sepp Blatter, never far from controversy, was tied into accusations of bribery and corruption, as Swiss authorities opened criminal proceedings in 2015 against Blatter focusing on a payment of two million Swiss francs to Platini. The payment was for work carried out by Platini as a consultant for FIFA between 1999 and 2002 but was not executed until 3 months after Qatar won its bid to host the World Cup. Despite Platini being held for questioning in 2019, and an abundance of evidence as to wrongdoing in regards to the Qatari World Cup bid, the tournament still went ahead. Despite the Qatari’s putting on an entertaining show, what should be a prestigious tournament governed by a respectable and fair organisation, was overshadowed by the devastating loss of life and total ignorance to the rights of the 30,000 migrant workers who were condemned to years of harsh labour

In summary, FIFA should remain a neutral, fair, and compassionate body, yet the true nature of FIFA is that of bribery and corruption, with a disastrous amount of blood dripping off the ever money hungry hands of the organisation and its employees.