 Foul! Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-rigging & Ticket Scandals; by Andrew Jennings |
In Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals, investigative journalist Andrew Jennings, painted FIFA in a hue that many at the world governing body would have rather not seen. Mr. Jennings is one of the few journalists who have written extensively about the inner workings at FIFA. He is the founder of Transparencyinsport.org, which is a site dedicated to his unique style of journalism and investigative projects.Since April 2005, I am the only reporter in the world who isn’t allowed to get near Sepp Blatter to ask a simple question.
Because I’ve got the documents, and he doesn’t want other journalists to say ‘Mr. Blatter, why are you and your girlfriends flying on FIFA’s tab?’ It is very embarrassing. So, in 2004, I ended up going to the African Cup of Nations, it was interesting, I managed to get the neck plastic, the accreditation, for where his press conference was staged. He was going on and on. So I asked him about a million francs, that would be about $600,000, bribe in FIFA’s bank account that should have gone to Joao Havelange, and he just froze. He realized what I was getting to. Then I asked about President Havelange. Blatter replied, ‘Well, well, we are not here to talk about this. We are here to talk about African football.’ He wouldn’t answer the question which is very important legally for a journalist. If you make an allegation, you must give them the right to respond…
BBC’s Panoroma, BBC’s blue chip program, can you imagine the best of CBS’s 60 Minutes running for 30 or 40 minutes, very big investigations, beautifully filmed, and we tried to get an interview with Blatter, just before the last World Cup, to ask him about corruption, and the bribes, and he wouldn’t be interviewed.
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Interview with Andrew Jennings: Author of Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-rigging and Ticket Scandals.
by Steve Amoia, author and editor of the World Football Commentaries blog
Interview with Andrew Jennings (Audio)You can listen to the interview by clicking the ‘Play’ button below (1 hour) or downloading the audio by right-clicking and selecting ‘Save’ here (25-30mb,.mp3).
Soccerlens editor Steve Amoia recently had the opportunity to interview respected investigative journalist and film maker, Mr. Andrew Jennings, whose recent book, “Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals” painted FIFA in a hue that many at the world governing body would have rather not seen. Mr. Jennings is one of the few journalists who have written extensively about the inner workings at FIFA.
Part 1: The Craft of Journalism: “Google will not replace shoe leather.”
(Excerpts)
SA: As a follow up to the last question, could you please elaborate on this quote?“Google will not replace shoe leather.”
AJ: Google has its uses. But let’s get serious. It is a fine research tool, but it doesn’t do what a journalist is supposed to do… Shoe leather is cheap. That’s how I get the story. If you walk down any suburban street, there is a story behind every door. There are people who work in factories, good people, that bad things happened to, and they are waiting for a knock on the door… If you knock on their door politely and say ‘I’m Andrew Jennings, I’m a journalist, I’m very interested in asbestos poisoning’ for example, that is where your story is from.
Many journalists think you get it from the Presidents or press releases. You get it from the janitor, the concierge, the guy who is a driver to Mr. Enron. It’s ordinary people who want to talk about it because they have to earn a living, but it’s shoe leather. Google can help, but you have to go out to get the story, and get people to trust you. Whether it is in any type of journalism: economy, sports, etc, people have stories. You have to persuade them.
If you read my book “Foul,” you’ll realize there are thousands of FIFA’s confidential documents in there, and you’d never guess where I got them from. If you do, I’ve gone wrong. And the bad guys tap my phones, they follow me, put detectives on me, but I don’t think they have figured out where I get my documents.
SA: What were your initial motivations to launch Transparencyinsport.org, along with your goals for the project?
AJ: Well, I still work in the traditional media, and I present investigative documentaries in Britain and around the world for the BBC, but I wasn’t really sure what to do about the Internet… Then I realized that people all over the world wanted to know about the stories I’m doing. It seems that if they hear about your work, they immediately do a web search to find you. So I started to put my articles on Transparencyinsport.org, and if people wanted to contact me, and it’s been quite a response from around the world, and I’ve made even more friends in every culture, every ethnic group, and every language. It’s been satisfying to find out there you are going in the same direction as the guys at the very top. But with morals. That’s what binds us together.
» » » » [Football Media]
Part 2: FIFA, Sepp Blatter and Bribes
 The Great Olympic Swindle: When the World Wanted Its Games Back; By Andrew Jennings & Clare Sambrook |
(Excerpts)
Let’s discuss your most recent book on FIFA. I read the first chapter of “Foul!” via the link on your web site. You spent seven years on this highly acclaimed work, and FIFA President, Joseph “Sepp” Blatter attempted to place a global ban on your book in a Swiss court. Let’s say that a person knew very little about FIFA. Could you provide us with a scouting report or dossier about one of the most powerful organizations in international sports?
It’s free on the web site and I hope you rushed to buy it!
There’s always two stories at these big international sport organizations like the IOC and FIFA. There is the story about themselves, how wonderful they are, how they care about the athletes, and then you find out about the kickbacks, find out about the immoral activities, if I could toss in, there was the scandal in America that broke in 1988 between the IOC, and the way they shook down the good old boys in Utah, I wrote books, I testified in front of Senator John McCain, the Senate Commerce Committee, in 1999, because I was the only one who could really explain what had gone wrong.
The problem with the big federations is, you know, we all know about if you are not accountable to somebody, your partner in life, the police or priests, whatever it is in life, you should know that if you do something wrong, as your mother told you, you’ll get found out.
But what you have with FIFA and the IOC is that you have a small group of reporters desperate not to alienate them because they need access to write stories about the head of the IOC or Sepp Blatter of FIFA. Actually, you don’t want them to talk to you because they are not going to tell you the truth.
I discovered with FIFA how deep the corruption was, I got into it in late 2000, 2001. Perhaps a background story might be interesting to listeners. I spent a dozen years investigating the IOC. I have a criminal record because Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC President, is a Fascist, I mean, like you know, Hitler, a guy who puts his right arm out in front and marches in jack boots, he was a Franco-Fascist in Spain in 1939 up until the time Franco died in 1975. I revealed his background, I got photographs of him wearing his Fascist uniform, and giving that horrid right hand salute as late as 1974, and he went to court in Lausanne, Switzerland, where the IOC is located, said it was all untrue, and they said how could this wonderful man, all that is moral in sport, turn bad?
So Andrew Jennings gets five days suspended jail sentence. You could be the best journalist in the world, but you know when they put in jail, you are getting it right.
As part of investigating corruption in America, you got to know where the money came from. Most of the money for the Olympics and the World Cup came from a company based in Switzerland called ISL: International Sport and Leisure. Most of us, my German friends and other researchers, knew that ISL paid bribes to FIFA, international track and field, and to the IOC to get fantastic contracts.
» » » » [Soccer Lens]
Part 3: Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals at FIFA
(Excerpts)
“It does make the Mafia look quite amateur…”
Another key topic of your book was vote rigging. Could you explain the voting apparatus at FIFA to award World Cups and/or to elect their President. Do certain people or Confederations hold more power than others in this process?
If you look at the pyramid, Blatter sits at the top, the other federations such as America, England, Scotland, for example, I think it numbers 208, it’s like you look under the floor boards and find a nest of mice. They are all little mice, even here in England, and we invented football. We are the cradle of football but we don’t squeak because we like that our officials are on FIFA committees and they have a very good lifestyle.
America is just as bad. Every country in the world should stand up and say stinking fish. So what you’ve got is each continental confederation, we are in UEFA in Europe, now headed by Blatter’s friend and protégée, Platini, there is CONCACAF, covering North and Central America, Caribbean, Africa and Asia and so on. There are six confederations. Once you get to be a Confederation President, such as Jack Warner in CONCACAF, they are very happy, they are making good money in addition to the rackets. They can’t complain. They keep Blatter in power so that they can get rich. They give him the vote. It does make the Mafia look quite amateur… They are the Enrons of sport in that respect.
So you have this pyramid at the top, and Herr Blatter says ‘I’m elected by the Parliaments of FIFA’, but at the FIFA Congress, you see all of the mice, 600, 700, in one room. They don’t even squeak. They have a wonderful lifestyle. It’s a very sad thing. The only way FIFA is going to get sorted out is by the investigators. Then Blatter will have to go. Sports should be doing this, but rather, they’ll turn to the investigating magistrate, the fraud squad, so that’s how you get Blatter out.
There are only 24 men who decide the World Cup. They don’t let women in. Most of them are not thieves. I think they are all morally corrupt because nobody raises their hand and says ‘I want to get out of here. I don’t like what is going on. We are going to take our regional Confederations and break away. We don’t like these scum.’ Not in football. Not in sport. 24 are members of FIFA’s Executive Committee. President Blatter does not cast a deciding vote. You have three from CONCACAF, your part of the world, Chuck Blazer, one of the partners with a wonderful apartment in Trump Tower, you’ve got Jack Warner in Trinidad and Tobago, Rafael Seguero from Mexico, they represent you, all sports fans know that, they claim to speak for you, but they don’t want to talk to you or spend time with you. We have 8 in Europe because we are just a bigger footballing area, there are 3 or 4 out of the African continent, and one from Oceania. These are the guys who decide who gets the World Cup. A year ago, I presented a BBC programme documenting the bribes, how Germany won the votes to host the last World Cup in 2006.
» » » » [Soccer Lens]
Part 4: The Future of FIFA
 Foul! Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-rigging & Ticket Scandals; by Andrew Jennings |
(Excerpts)
“Blatter will never retire. He will stay until the mortician arrives with the black bag to take his body out.”
In September of this year, Mr. Blatter made a visit to South Africa to inspect their stadia and infrastructure ahead of World Cup 2010. Is there any possibility that FIFA could take the World Cup away from South Africa (Plan B), and if so, who would be candidates to host the event on such short notice?
You can take the World Cup away from any country. Even a stable one. You’ve got seven years from the bid to the actual hosting. Anything is possible. One thing about South Africa is that it is a money making enterprise. They are very happy to have the World Cup there. Economic activity, job creativity, etc, all the ways of making money out of a sports tournament.
They know they’ve got problems on crime, on a few other problems, and Blatter exploits that. Just go back two years to Addis Ababa, a FIFA an African Union convention, Blatter gave a speech there and said, ‘The World Cup this time will be for Africa.’ And I thought it won’t be because whatever he says, usually the opposite comes true.
I’ve looked over the contracts. They call for stadium design, decorating, updating the stadiums, all of those things, and that is going out to friends of his in Germany and Switzerland. You know when he says we need a Plan B, he is just finishing negotiations on a business deal with South African organizers… And if he says, ‘Well, there is a lot of interest in Australia, or it could go back to Germany, they’d like to do it,’ it is a negotiating tool to flatten the guy on the other side of the table… The South Africans are making more and more concessions. And they won’t take it away. And I’ll tell you why. Blatter wants to be reelected in 2011, and if they take it away, Africa’s votes will immediately go to another candidate. They won’t take it away…
In your opinion, what was the real reason why Mr. Blatter refused to present the Italians with the World Cup trophy in Berlin? (He did present it to the Italian FA in September 2008).
» » » » [Soccer Lens]
Steve Amoia is the author and editor of the World Football Commentaries blog. He has written for AC Cugini Scuola Calcio, Keeper Skool, and Soccerlens. Images courtesy of Andrew Jennings.
» » » » [Soccer Lens]
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