FIFA pair Blatter and Valcke now facing arrest by US investigators
THE American criminal investigation into FIFA corruption is closing in on Sepp Blatter’s former right-hand man Jerome Valcke, who has been cited but not named in new case paperwork.
And it appears that Valcke and Blatter himself may face arrest at some stage.
Valcke was FIFA’s secretary general until September, when he was suspended amid allegations of involvement in ticket touting. Sources have told The Mail on Sunday he is identified as ‘Co-Conspirator No 17’ in an updated US Department of Justice (DoJ) indictment document.
Another suspect mentioned for the first time in recent days is ‘Co-Conspirator No 14’, described only as ‘a high-ranking official of FIFA’.
Valcke has declined to comment over whether he is ‘Co-Conspirator No 17’. Sources close to Blatter will neither confirm nor deny if he is ‘Co-Conspirator No 14’. One said that until recently it was believed Blatter was not a ‘target’ of the DoJ.
Anyone eventually convicted of the fraud, money-laundering and racketeering charges laid out by the DoJ faces a potential prison sentence in the USA.
Both ‘Co-Conspirator No 17’ and ‘Co-Conspirator No 14’ were allegedly involved in the payment of a $10million bribe by the South African government, via FIFA, for votes in 2004 that helped South Africa become hosts of the 2010 World Cup.
The DoJ allege the transfer of the $10m, made in 2008 in three instalments, was activated by Co-Conspirator No 17 and that the cash went to former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, who has been indicted in the case and the US authorities have made an extradition request to his native Trinidad.
It is alleged the cash was divided by Warner and two fellow FIFA executive members, with another of those being America’s Chuck Blazer, whose whistleblowing has helped to inform the DoJ case.
The indictment also alleges that Blazer was told by Warner that ‘highranking FIFA officials, including Co-Conspirator No 14, the South African bid committee and the South African government, were prepared to arrange for the government of South Africa to pay $10m’.
Valcke has been linked to the movement of that money, firstly when The Mail on Sunday revealed in May this year that he would have needed to authorise the transfer.
Within hours of that report, a document leaked in South Africa confirmed that Valcke had been directed to channel the $10m to Warner.
Then a leaked email sent by Valcke to the South African FA in December 2007 mentioned a ‘transfer’ (of money) as a result of talks between ‘our president’, a clear reference to Blatter, and the president of South Africa at that time, Thabo Mbeki. In a recent hitherto unpublished interview with former long-time FIFA insider Jerome Champagne — now standing as a presidential candidate to replace Blatter — Champagne told The Mail on Sunday he had been present when Mbeki and Blatter discussed the $10m funding scheme.
‘Thabo Mbeki himself, in a meeting which I attended (in November 2007 in South Africa) announced that the South African government would develop a programme for the other African federations and for the diaspora.’
Champagne said: ‘It’s not Mr Blatter, it’s not me, it’s not FIFA. It’s Mr Thabo Mbeki, who was the president of the republic of South Africa.
‘This government asked the South African FA to ask Valcke to pay $10m to Jack Warner based on the pool of money FIFA contractually agreed to pay to the local organising committee.
‘You have to ask Valcke how the money was transferred and did he know that the account of Warner (into which the $10m was paid) was a personal account.’