Jordaan wants Fifa to get cracking on match-fixing probe
Fixer says he brought in his own officials to ensure some friendly matches before 2010 went the way he wanted
THE government will not touch it, but South Africa’s soccer authorities say they are now determined to get to the bottom of the country’s match-fixing scandal.
The crooked matches were played here shortly before South Africa staged the 2010 World Cup.
The minister of sport, Fikile Mbalula, said: “I can’t comment on the matter. Fifa is better placed.”
Now South African Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan says he will urge Fifa to get on the case. “It has been difficult to engage Fifa on this over the last month because they have had so much focus and concentration on delivering the successful World Cup in Brazil,” Jordaan said in Rio, where he has spent the past month as a member of the World Cup organising committee.
“But we need to resolve this matter and move forward, and I will ask them to make it a priority in the next months.”
Although there was no comment from Fifa, Mbalula is confident that it will respond favourably to Safa’s request. “Fifa took it upon themselves to investigate,” said the minister. “They said they are going to deal with this.
“They made an undertaking to the South African government that they will investigate.
“We are expecting them to announce the time frames of their investigation and report on the progress made. Jerome Valcke [the Fifa secretary-general] and Safa must tell us the progress.”
Jordaan said he would go to Fifa headquarters in Zurich as soon as possible after the World Cup to make a plea for the investigation to start.
Safa’s search for a new image, new sponsorship and a fresh start after years in the doldrums makes resolution of the scandal increasingly important.
The association, due to name a new coach and technical director in the coming weeks, has found itself frequently caught in the quagmire of scandal and the once powerful Bafana Bafana brand now lingers in limbo.
Allegations of match-fixing popped up at the World Cup in Brazil, involving Cameroon and Ghana, although on both occasions media reports have turned out to be flimsy at best.
But Africa has not rid itself of the perception of match manipulation. Players and officials involved in fraud go unpunished and continue to be involved in the game — unlike in Eu- rope and Latin America, where culprits in similar cases have been given life bans and kicked out of the sport.
The investigation in South Africa should centre on the collaboration of Safa officials and convicted Singaporean match-fixing mastermind Wilson Raj Perumal in appointing referees for four of Bafana’s friendly matches ahead of the 2010 World Cup. The referees for matches against Bulgaria, Colombia, Thailand and Bulgaria ensured an exact outcome to the benefit of Asian betting syndicates, which made millions from the fixes.
Fifa came to South Africa to investigate and its initial report set out the sequence of events. However, it failed to put any direct blame on any officials. The Fifa report did, however, lead to the brief suspension of several top Safa officials in what seemed a panicky decision by the organisation’s executive.
Reports of the scandal first appeared in the media in 2011, but Safa ignored them. It seemed relieved when Fifa asked it to leave the matter to its own investigators, who were conducting a combined worldwide inquiry into Perumal’s manipulation of matches across Asia and Africa.
Fifa’s investigation was initially handled by its own security department, but it has since been handed to independent investigator Michael Garcia, a New York attorney.
Garcia is leading the Fifa ethics probe into the shadowy bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.