Johannesburg – News that Swiss prosecutors have opened proceedings against outgoing Fifa president Sepp Blatter after searching his office and seizing data on Friday is expected to give Safa bigwigs Danny Jordaan and Molefi Oliphant sleepless nights.
Swiss prosecutors opened the investigation on suspicion of criminal mismanagement or misappropriation relating to a contract Blatter signed with Caribbean football chief Jack Warner in 2005. The Swiss attorney-general’s office said Blatter was suspected of having signed a contract that was “unfavourable to Fifa” and of having “violated his fiduciary duties and acted against the interest of Fifa”.
He is also suspected to have made a “disloyal payment” to European football chief Michel Platini.
The 79-year-old Blatter, who has led Fifa since 1998, has consistently denied wrongdoing. Fifa says it is co-operating with the investigation.
The Sunday Independent investigation links the contract the prosecutors mention to a deal in which Blatter proposed that Fifa withhold US$10 million from the Jack Warner-headed Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) between 1999 and 2002. Blatter proposed this after establishing that the multimillion-rand João Havelange Centre of Excellence in Macoya, Trinidad, was registered in Warner’s name. This was after an integrity committee had established that US$26m in Concacaf funds had gone to the centre.
Former Fifa president Havelange had promised to fund the centre, just a month before Blatter replaced him as president in June 1998.
This was the period immediately after South Africa lost to Germany in bidding to host the 2006 World Cup.
South Africa submitted its bid document on August 9, 1999 and controversially lost to Germany on July 6, 2000. On August 4 and 5, 2000, the Fifa congress in Zurich adopted the rotation policy, making the 2010 campaign an all-Africa bid. South Africa decided to bid for the 2010 event.
“It is with pleasure that I now inform you that I have found an external solution to convert the loan into a donation,” Havelange wrote to Warner.
Blatter later wrote a letter to Warner that said: “We mutually agreed that US$10m of this would be reimbursable by means of Fifa’s annual contribution to Concacaf of US$2.5m over the four years 1999 to 2002.”
Coincidentally, South Africa made a US$10m donation to support football among the “African diaspora” in the Caribbean two years before it hosted the first Fifa World Cup in Africa.
Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula said the $10m had been to fund the João Havelange Centre of Excellence.
The Sunday Independent has established the $10m could not have been used in 2008 for the building of the centre as it had been in existence for 10 years. The SA Football Association and the Sports Ministry have insisted that the payment was an honest donation.
The Sports Ministry could not be reached for comment. Fifa spokeswoman Delia Fischer said: “We will have no further comment on the matter as it is an active investigation.”
– THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT