Turmoil at FIFA continues
Threats to quit, provisional ban, resignation, follow corruption arrests
A new week has brought new turmoil for FIFA president Sepp Blatter and his scandaltainted organization, which is in the midst of the worst corruption case in its 111- year history.
On Monday, FIFA provisionally banned another soccer official — CONCACAF general secretary Enrique Sanz — as its ethics committee assesses evidence from the U. S. criminal investigation.
While the newly re- elected Blatter seems to be going nowhere despite the arrests and indictments of several soccer officials last week in Zurich, others are calling it quits or threatening to do so.
FIFA medical chief Michel D’Hooghe, the longest- serving member on the executive committee, said he would leave unless there were rapid reforms.
“I cannot reconcile myself with an institution where I work, where I have carried the medical responsibility for 27 years and about which I now learn that there is a lot of corruption,” D’Hooghe told the VRT television network in Belgium.
“My conclusion is very clear: I will no longer continue to participate ( in FIFA) under such conditions. So, it is high time for change to come and we will see over the coming days what may happen. Let’s be clear, if this atmosphere prevails at FIFA, I have no place there.”
D’Hooghe has served on FIFA’s ruling body since 1988, a decade before Blatter’s move up from secretary general to president.
Heather Rabbatts went a step further and resigned from her post on the FIFA anti- discrimination task force. That body, until last week, was chaired by Jeffrey Webb, who was suspended as a FIFA vicepresident and remains in custody in Switzerland along with six others after being arrested as part of the U. S. corruption investigation.
Rabbatts is also a director at the English Football Association, a long- standing critic of Blatter.
Meanwhile, former South African President Thabo Mbeki denied his government paid bribes to secure the 2010 World Cup.
“I wish to state that the government that I had the privilege to lead would never have paid any bribe even if it were solicited,” Mbeki said in a statement from his office.
His denial came as South African soccer head and former 2010 bid leader Danny Jordaan reportedly told a newspaper that $ 10 million was paid to former FIFA vicepresident Jack Warner’s regional confederation in 2008. According to the Sunday Independent newspaper, Jordaan denied that money — referred to in the U. S. Department of Justice’s indictment into corruption in FIFA — was a bribe from South Africa via FIFA for Warner’s backing.
Instead, Jordaan said it was to help Warner — implicated in a series of corruption allegations in the DOJ investigation into FIFA — with soccer development in his region, the newspaper reported.