By Andrew Warshaw
November 20 – One of the two whistleblowers whose evidence to the FIFA 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid investigation was deemed unreliable has revealed she was contacted by the FBI after initially making her corruption claims against Qatar and says she permanently fears for her life.
Phaedra Al-Majid alleged that three African FIFA ex-co members at the time were offered $1.5 million to vote for Qatar as 2022 World Cup hosts. All three denied the claims as did Qatar’s World Cup organisers.
Al-Majid subsequently retracted her claims, saying she wanted to exact revenge after losing her campaign job. But she has since repeatedly insisted she only did so after being threatened and coerced into signing a sworn, legal document in June, 2011, six months after Qatar won a landslide victory. She has not said who threatened her.
Back in the US, like former FIFA exco member Chuck Blazer, she turned FBI informant telling the BBC, “it was decided at that point that I would help them with their investigation and it was planned that I would talk to a senior official at the Qatar bid. So when I talked to the official – and the FBI are recording this – he did admit that there was a deal for the affidavit, that I would basically say that they had done no wrongdoing.” She does not name the Qatari official.
One of the first employees on the Qatar World Cup bid team as head of international communication, Al-Majid left her job early in the process for reasons that have not been fully explained.
Around that time, she spoke anonymously to a handful of journalists about her concerns but laid low after leaving Qatar for her native United States before her allegations came to light again when she assisted with Michael Garcia’s anti-corruption probe.
Now, she says, she will “look over my shoulder for the rest of my life”.
“I’ve been introduced to a whole new culture of paranoia, fear and threats,” Al-Majid said in interviews with the BBC and Sky.
In those interviews Al-Majid recalled FBI agents wearing badges visited her and warned she was in danger. She says she was equipped with a recording device.
“They told me my security and that of my children was jeopardised,” Al-Majid told Sky. “I was terrified. They asked me questions pertaining to my time in Qatar and what I had observed.”
This week, she and former Australian bid team employee Bonita Mersiades accused FIFA ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert of effectively breaching their identities in his summary of Garcia’s two-year probe.
Al-Majid, who has written a personal letter to Garcia protesting that the confidentiality pledges made to her were betrayed, says she had suffered “personally and emotionally.”
“I know for a fact I will be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. It’s cost me my credibility and most importantly …security for both me and my children. However, I did witness something and I had to say what I witnessed.”
She told Sky that when she realised her evidence had been dismissed by Eckert and that her cover had been blown, “I was absolutely shocked, I was crying.”
“Every time I met with Michael Garcia he assured me everything was confidential. It was agreed upon before I even met him that I would not participate unless I was kept anonymous and everything I provided would be kept in confidence. I had no reason not to trust him.”
What is unclear from her interview is how far Garcia and the FBI were co-ordinated in their investigation, if at all, though she gives the clear impression that there was a blurring of boundaries.
In her BBC interview, she described FIFA’s conduct as a “silent warning” to all future whistleblowers not to come forward because “this is what will happen to you.”
Al-Majid’s remarks will again focus unwanted attention on Qatar’s conduct during the bid process. But they also raise questions about the involvement of the FBI and what its motivations are. Earlier this month it was revealed that former FIFA powerbroker Chuck Blazer was working under cover for US federal authorities, including organising and recording meetings with senior football officials at the London 2012 Olympics.
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