Print EmailAustralian Broadcasting CorporationBroadcast: 23/05/2011Reporter: Ali Moore
Investigative journalist Andrew Jennings has been chronicling evidence of corruption and bribery within FIFA.
ALI MOORE, PRESENTER: The right to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup soccer finals was decided in a secret ballot by soccer's governing body FIFA in December last year, and there were more than a few eyebrows raised when Qatar won the right to host the tournament in 2022.
In Australia there was shock at how poorly this country's bid had fared, garnering just one vote in the first round, and concerns have been raised about how the $45 million of taxpayers' money was spent.
And Australia is not the only country now casting a sceptical eye over the process.
A British parliamentary committee has been examining England's bid and has heard that executive members of FIFA solicited favours or money in return for their support.
One journalist at the centre of that story is Andrew Jennings.
He runs a website called TransparencyinSport.org. He's preparing a report to air tonight on the BBC's Panorama program and he joins us now from London.
Andrew Jennings, welcome to Lateline.
ANDREW JENNINGS, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST & AUTHOR: Hello, Ali.
ALI MOORE: One third of FIFA executive committee members have now either been found guilty or been accused of impropriety. After your latest research, and in your view, how corrupt is FIFA?
ANDREW JENNINGS: I think FIFA is institutionally corrupt. It should be closed down following a conference of intergovernmental sports ministers - similar to the meetings which changed the International Olympic Committee in 1999.
We shouldn't be taking any more nonsense from Herr Blatter. He runs a corrupt organisation. This is the fourth major documentary I've made for British television and still I hear people out there saying, "Well, you know, he said he'll get rid of the devils and he'll reform it."
Ah, was Mr Capone going to close down the Mafia in Chicago? Can we get real about this?
ALI MOORE: Do you have hard, incontrovertible proof? Because of course it raises the question: if you've reported this before, if there is hard proof, why has nothing being done?
ANDREW JENNINGS: Of course I have hard proof. I'm an investigative reporter. You don't send me to the sports match - I might get the scoreline wrong.
I go for documents. In the last BBC Panorama I did in November just before that vote, I revealed a document showing US$100 million worth of bribes to FIFA officials. Some of them they did through Lichtenstein brass plate companies, some were by names.
We made the point as we've been making on BBC Television since 2006 that Blatter actually handled one of the bribes.
He doesn't sue us, he doesn't talk about it, it's in my book about FIFA. Unfortunately, you see you have a cut-off between sports reporters who don't do investigations, they listen to spin doctors like Peter Hargitay who we'll come to in a bit.
They don't go and get the documents. We've got them, we're not sued, it's there and slowly the temperature is going up. At last it's going up in England over the way these people have made fools of us and fools of you as well.
ALI MOORE: Well, there are two executive committee members who have already been suspended. As I said earlier, there's another six who are being investigated. Does the evidence that you have go past that eight?
ANDREW JENNINGS: We've been naming them. I mean, if you can get access to the BBC program - go on my website and you'll see the - in two parts, the last program I made, FIFA's Dirty Secret, where we named Nicholas Laos from Paraguay for getting US$730,000. He's the one now accused of asking for a knighthood from the Brits, which I'm quite sure he did.
Jack Warner, so corrupt you don't know where to start, a racist kleptomaniac - and that's legally safe by the way. He's the one who you'll see on television, he's always spitting at me or hitting me. That's a nice advertisement for football.
We've got another documented story on Waller. We've got the documents of him trading in tickets in 2006 and we did some of them last year in 2010, but FIFA is never going to investigate. How can Blatter or Mohamed bin Hamam, the challenger, investigate Jack Warner who runs the Caribbean region and 35 votes with more discipline than Pyongyang in North Korea? It stinks. It's disgusting.
ALI MOORE: Well, indeed it raises the question what does happen next and what needs to happen, because as you just indicated the FIFA presidential election is being held on 1st June.
Sepp Blatter is up against the Qatari Mohamed bin Hamam. Is it likely that Blatter will get back in, and if so, it seems fairly clear you have no faith that he will be able to do the job of investigation and restoration?
ANDREW JENNINGS: He has no interest in doing it. He has no interest in doing it at all. Why should he? These are people who keep him in power.
Sadly Mohammed bin Hamam, who I know quite well and I can chat to, is quite clear when I talk to him, and I talk to him in tonight's film, he doesn't accept there's any corruption at FIFA. I mean, we have the documents. He doesn't accept it, so there's going to be no change.
So what it is to be done? Well, we have started to move very slowly, very late, very late in the day, but at least in the British Parliament things are now happening and we have - we are now as a public putting pressure on the dimwits at the English Football Association.
They've now agreed that they're going to abstain in this election. And what the next thing they should do is call for: Sports minister shall speak unto sports minister.
They're furious in America. You guys are furious. You got totally ripped off and deluded in Australia. The Dutch are also angry. You start having an interdepartmental, intergovernmental congress and FIFA will collapse, because the sponsors will say "ah-ah", as they said to the international Olympic committee and clean-up time will come.
So what you have to do is Mr Arbib, your Sports Minister, should be on the phone tomorrow to the British sports minister, Robertson. I don't know who does the job in Washington, but there'll be somebody, or somebody in the Senate.
You start ringing around and say, "We've had enough of these bums." And that way, the sponsors would instantly withdraw support. They've already started talking about it. Sony Europe spokesman said last year just before our last round of disclosures, he said to a conference, "Let's make clear: we're not sponsors of FIFA, we're sponsors of the football World Cup." So the crack is going in.
Will you help us in Australia, please, get rid of these bums. And by the way, why aren't the coppers round, why aren't your fraud squad round FFA headquarters looking at the money that went to Hargitay and the dubious people he bought in to Australia that took your money?
ALI MOORE: Well let me ask you that - though there's two, Peter Hargitay and Fedor Radmann, who Australia hired to help with their bid. It seems unclear how much they were paid, but it looks like it could be in the millions. Tell us about them.
ANDREW JENNINGS: It is, it's more. Look, England only got one thing wrong - one thing right, I'm sorry. Because I do label both countries' sports officials in this sense as being stupid.
England - Lord David Triesman arrived at the English FA to find the buffoons there had fallen for Hargitay's glib talk. "You know I know president Blatter. I'm very close." Oh, yes, Peter, will you work for us? Triesman walked in the door and said, "What's that bum doing here?," and threw him out. He fired him.
The buffoons from Australia listened to this and Les Murray joined in, it's the 1956 Hungarian nexus, I'm afraid, which is, "Oh, well, Peter Hargitay's a wonderful person, very well-connected and we're lucky to get him."
Lucky? How much did it cost? You're looking at millions of dollars. Because don't just look at the fees that went to him and Fedor Radmann. Don't just look at their first-class travel around the world, the way most Australians will never travel. Look also at the dirty - I mean there's something very dirty at the heart of your bid and you ought to know about it.
ALI MOORE: But if you have hard evidence that those two are involved ...
ANDREW JENNINGS: Yeah, of course we've got hard evidence! Ali, we've got massive hard evidence! You guys don't listen. Sports officials don't listen.
Why do you think we've done four major programs for BBC Television, our blue-ribbon current affairs show, and still I hear sports reporters going, "Well I think president Blatter wants to reform." And you just think what are they smoking? What are they smoking?
ALI MOORE: It does seem extraordinary looking at the evidence that is on your website and that you have regarding Hargitay and Radmann; how do you explain that someone like Frank Lowy, who heads the Football Federation of Australia, also runs a multibillion dollar business, is clearly no fool, what happened? Not appropriate due diligence?
ANDREW JENNINGS: Look, I can only guess with Frank Lowy. I think he's been very busy with Westfield's problems in America fighting off the recession. That's a lot of work for him and his family, massive amount of work.
He hasn't had the time that maybe he should've had to look at the A League and its problems, and he had a chief executive, Ben Buckley, who's not fit to clean our shoes, who's just a buffoon.
And at the heart of it you have to know the terrible thing that happened. Hargitay turned up glibly selling his dubious wares, right? Ben Buckley fell for it, backed up by Les Murray talking gibberish at SBS. Why Lowy fell for it I don't know. I can only think he was too busy, OK?
What happened? One of the employees in your Federation office, a woman, spotted what Hargitay was. She'd read the international press, she read what was happening in Germany, what I'd written about him unchallenged in Britain.
Hargitay said to Buckley, "Fire that woman. Fire that person. Get her out." And big, brave, ballsy Ben Buckley said, "Yes, Peter." You know, imagine: six foot four, Rules player, tough as they come, should've booted Hargitay into the harbour, fired this five foot five inch-high smart, good, decent Australian employee who's never worked since.
You got conned out of lots of money and now you're still running this crap that somehow Australia nearly got it.
America would've got it if certain things, which we'll not say because there's a lot of lawyers watching what's being said at the moment about Qatar. Let's say we were very, very, very, very, very surprised that Qatar got it. Well I wasn't so, but most people were.
America should have got it. Australia never had a hope, and it's not your fault. You're not bad people. I'm a friend.
ALI MOORE: Alright, Andrew Jennings, thank you very much, and I know that there's a lot more to come out of this. And if you're right and the sponsors are starting to talk about removing their sponsorship, then maybe there will be some progress. Andrew Jennings, many thanks for talking to Lateline tonight.
ANDREW JENNINGS: Thank you.
Do you have a comment or a story idea? Get in touch with the Lateline team by clicking here.
View the original article here
