By Paul Nicholson
March 30 – Bonita Mersiades, the self-outed whistleblower from the Michael Garcia report into corruption in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process, has again hit the headlines, this time with the revelation that she was found guilty of government fraud in Australia.
Speaking on German channel ZDF’s Sportstudio programme, Mersiades was confronted by FIFA head of communications Walter de Gregorio who revealed details of her fraud in Australia, and raised questions about her credibility as a reliable critic of alleged corruption in FIFA.
Mersiades, then using her maiden name of Bonita Matijevic, was found guilty of defrauding her former employer – Australia’s Department of Employment, Education and Training – by an ACT Supreme Court jury in 1996.
The charges related to a trip she and her husband made to Queensland in 1992 at departmental expense. She was released on a $500, 12-month good-behaviour bond.
It also came to light that she had won a $65,000 contract from the Australian National Training Authority in March 1996, the day after her resignation from the same department had been accepted.
Mersiades has been a fierce critic of FIFA and a prime mover in the New FIFA Now movement alongside British Conservative MP Damien Collins (battling to win re-election this May in a parliamentary seat targeted by UKIP) and disgraced former FA chairman Lord Triessman who resigned from his FA position over ethics violations.
Their New FIFA Now platform has given them all publicity though whether their associations and previous histories have been enhanced alongside that of the ‘movement’ is looking increasingly dubious and their own motives increasingly suspicious.
As a member of the Australian 2022 World Cup bid team, Mersiades was sacked 11 months before the FIFA vote for reasons that have never been fully disclosed either by Mersiades or the Australians.
Since that time Mersiades has claimed inside knowledge of world cup bid dealmaking and skulduggery, as well as widespread FIFA corruption. Ironically, with her past history of government fraud now coming to light, she has been particularly critical of what she says was the misuse of Australian government money. Though it could be argued that she is an expert in this area.
Mersiades was interviewed by FIFA Ethics investigator Michael Garcia but her information was deemed unreliable by Garcia.
Following the summary of Garcia’s World Cup bidding report by FIFA Ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, Mersiades claimed that her right to confidentiality as a whistleblower had been broken and that the summary identified her.
A review of her complaint found that “the breach of confidentiality claim had no substance”. No names were mentioned in the statement and it was viewed that “the participants in the investigation had gone public with their own media activities long before the publication of the statement of the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber Judge Eckert.”
When Mersiades (then going by Matijevic) was found guilt of fraud in 1997, the prosecution immediately launched an appeal against the penalty, claiming it did not reflect the severity of the offence. While the appeal judges ruled not to increase the penalty itself after hearing that she had lost more than $240,000 in foregone salary and superannuation benefits because of the criminal proceedings, they did enter the judgement as a conviction. Furthermore, Justices Gallop and Mathews said: “The jury’s verdict means that she was deliberately enriching herself at the expense of the government.”
A claim Mersiades has repeatedly made against FIFA and others related to the Australian 2022 World Cup bid, but which has never been substantiated.
Mersiades has frequently been championed by many of the world’s leading investigative journalists and media outlets who have been FIFA’s fiercest critics. While the rhetoric has often sounded impressive the lack of factual proof has continually rendered the rhetoric meaningless.
The latest Mersiades revelations will do nothing to advance the credibility of the rhetorically driven, whether they are on to something or not. This, especially in light of her own admission on German TV, when asked about proof she said: “No, we don’t have proof. We don’t have a smoking revolver.”
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