New Qatar World Cup corruption scandal over ‘secret $100m deal’
Qatar has been hit with fresh allegations of corruption over its 2022 World Cup bid, as a new book claims its state TV company agreed a secret US$100 million (Dh367m) deal with Fifa if they won the vote.
The claims are made in a soon-to-be-released book, written by a whistleblower who was part of Australia’s failed 2022 bid, Bonita Mersiades, who spent years investigating the case and even interviewed former Fifa president Sepp Blatter as part of her research.
An advance summary of the book, released by The Mail on
Sunday in the UK, also claims that Mr Blatter knew Qatar would win the vote, beating the US, which had been the favourite. So sure was he of the outcome that he phoned president Barack Obama days before the vote to tell him the US would lose, it is claimed.
In an excerpt from the book, Mr Blatter says Michel Platini, the Uefa president at the time, told him that he and others on the 22-man executive committee were going to back Qatar.
But after Qatar won, Mr Blatter was apparently dismayed and wanted it stripped of the tournament.
He is understood to have tried twice to retract Qatar’s right to host the event but on both occasions agreed to drop his complaints in exchange for the emir’s guarantee that Mohamed bin Hammam, Qatar’s ExCo member, would not oppose him in the 2011 Fifa presidency election.
Details of the deal that Mr Blatter made with broadcaster Al Jazeera Sports, now beIN Sports, were also revealed in the book.
In the months before the December 2010 vote – and with Fifa executives worried about potentially low revenues from a Qatar win – the broadcaster agreed to pay Fifa $100m if the country was successful.
According to the book, the deal was agreed with the involvement of Jerome Valcke, who was at the time secretary general of Fifa but subsequently banned for nine years from football for corruption.
The book says: “According to former Fifa staff, Valcke’s share was generally 5 per cent for negotiating the deal.”
When Mersiades asked Mr Blatter about the deal, he is alleged to have shrugged and said: “That is not unusual.” When asked by The Mail on
Sunday about the alleged payment, beIN did not deny it and said such a payment was “standard market practice” and “often imposed upon broadcasters by sports federations and sports rights holders”.
The book is due to be launched on Wednesday.