Days after his re-election, soccer chief says he’ll quit
FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced Tuesday that he would step down as the most powerful man in soccer, less than a week after his organization became engulfed by a highlevel corruption scandal.
At a news conference at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Blatter said that he would be in a better position to institute reform throughout the organization before he leaves the soccer federation in a few months.
“While I have a mandate from the membership of FIFA, I do not feel that I have a mandate from the entire world of football — the fans, the players, the clubs, the people who live, breathe and love football as much as we all do at FIFA,” Blatter said, according to a translated copy of his prepared remarks.
Blatter, 79, was re-elected to a fifth term Friday, defeating Prince Ali bin alHussein of Jordan in a contest that came just two days after the indictments by the U.S. Justice Department of 14 people connected with FIFA on bribery-related charges. Blatter said Tuesday that the scandal overrode the vote.
“I have thoroughly considered my presidency, thought about my presidency and about the last 40 years in my life,” he said. “I am now free from the constraints of an election. I will be in a position to focus on implementing ambitious and profound reforms to follow on our initial efforts.”
His announcement came just a day after media outlets reported that federal authorities believe that FIFA’s secretary-general, Jerome Valcke, was behind $10 million in bank trans- actions that are one focus of the scandal.
Domenico Scala, FIFA’s chairman of audit and compliance who also oversaw last week’s presidential election, said the group’s bylaws require f our months’ notice before a new election is held. He said FIFA would attempt to hold the new election sometime between December 2015 and March of next year.
“Nothing will be off the table, including the structure and composition of the executive committee and the way in which the executive committee (is) elected,” Scala said.
Among the reforms Scala said FIFA would seek were FIFA- driven “integrity checks” for all executive committee members, term limits for the president and executive committee members, and public disclosure of their compensation.
“These steps will ensure that the organization cannot be used by those seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of the game.”
The scandal that sparked Blatter’s resignation unfolded when federal prosecutors in New York charged 14 people, nine of them current or past highranking members of FIFA, in an indictment that alleged systemic and deeprooted corruption within soccer’s governing body.
Subsequent raids were carried out in Zurich and Miami, part of a yearslong FBI probe into crimes that authorities said dated back two decades.
Authorities involved in the case said that Valcke, Blatter’s top lieutenant, is identified in the indictments as a “high-ranking FIFA official,” The New York Times reported. According to prosecutors, that official in 2008 moved $10 million from FIFA accounts to ones controlled by Jack Warner, president of CONCACAF, the regional federation that oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Valcke was not named in the indictments and has not been accused of a crime.
Those charged include FIFA Vice President Jeffrey Webb; Julio Rocha, the organization’s development officer; Eduardo Li, an executive committee memberelect; Eugenio Figueredo, a vice president and executive committee member; and Jose Maria Marin, a member of the organizing committee for the Olympic soccer tournaments.
In response to Blatter’s resignation, the Swiss attorney general’s office released a statement confirming FIFA’s ex-president was not facing a criminal probe.