-British journalist to present dossier on ‘back room’ dealings

Virtually on the eve of the staging of June 11 to July 11, 2010 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup Football Tournament in South Africa, the spotlight will fall once again on the dark clouds of corruption that have long hung over the world’s most popular sport.

Over time, various reports by international organizations and sports’ watchers, including, most recently, Transparency International’s Global Corruption Report have revealed details of links by FIFA officials to major corruption rackets. The issue is about to surface again at the May 2-4 Eighth Annual Offshore Alert Financial Due Diligence Conference scheduled to be held at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, South Beach Florida.

A programme preview released by Offshore Alert recently indicates that the British sports journalist Andrew Jennings will use the forum to present the findings of an investigation into what he alleges is FIFA-engineered corruption in football on a mafia-like scale. Jennings, the Offshore Alert release says, will present evidence of bribery and corruption within FIFA that will focus in large measure on the organization’s senior officials.

Jennings, who asserts that international football has become a law unto itself and has become “off limits to law enforcement and regulators” will reportedly allege at the May forum that some of FIFA’s top officials are at the heart of a culture of corruption in international football, and that they have diverted tens of millions of dollars by corrupting the process whereby countries bid to host the four-yearly World Cup tournament and acquire attendant television rights, ticket sales and merchandising.

Jennings is quoted as describing as “immoral, unethical, illegal and, frankly, sinister,” what he says are backroom deals, that have lacked transparency and accountability and which he claims have led to relatives and friends being awarded lucrative contracts.

Similar claims were made in Transparency International’s 2009 Global Corruption Report which provided an account of a raft of bribery and kickback scandals involving a now bankrupt company named International Sports Media and Marketing which the report claims held a stranglehold on multi-billion dollar television rights for FIFA’s World Cup tournament and other major international sports events, including the Olympics.

Jennings has alleged that a relative of a senior FIFA official operates a “cartel” that controls ticketing for the World Cup, and says of one official; “Twenty years ago he was a poor school teacher. Now he is a multi millionaire controlling 35 of FIFA’s 208 Associations. He is untouchable.”

Jennings’ report is expected to address how, he says, corruption, rather than the bids put forward by the respective countries, determines who hosts the highly lucrative World Cup tournament. At the conference the British journalist will reportedly raise the issue of the apparent indifference to corrupt practices within FIFA and will also address what he says is the role of banks in laundering funds for those involved in the corrupt practices.

In recent years Jennings has waged a near messianic campaign targeting Warner and alleging he has been a perpetrator of corrupt acts in football; he has produced four reports for British television between 2006 and 2007.

At the upcoming conference, Offshore Alert says, Jennings will pose questions about why the world’s major governments tolerate corruption in international football if they are serious about clamping down on financial crime; why banks ignore red flags and continue to launder funds for those involved; whether soccer has become so big that it is off limits to regulators and law enforcement; and whether Switzerland, where FIFA has its headquarters, is wilfully turning a blind eye to financial crime on a massive scale.

While previous charges of corrupt practices involving senior FIFA officials appear to have gone relatively unnoticed, the timing of the Offshore Alert forum, coinciding as it does with a global interest in stemming the tide of international financial crime could have an impact on the outcome of the Jennings report.