By Andrew Warshaw
June 6 – South Africa’s 2010 World Cup boss Danny Jordaan (pictured) is back in the firing line over the infamous $10 million which United States prosecutors allege was a bribe to secure the country the showpiece tournament and which South Africa’s government counters was a perfectly above board World Cup legacy payment.
The money formed a significant part of the $150 million global FIFA-related ‘racketeering’ and money laundering revelations unleashed last week in the indictment presented by the US attorney general who said it had been going on for two decades.
Overnight, a leaked report in South Africa said Jordaan, who took a break after 2010 but is now back as his federation’s president, requested the money be paid in a letter FIFA secretary general Jérôme Valcke.
Valcke has denied any wrongdoing while FIFA says payment of the sum would have been the role of its finance committee head at the time, Julio Grondona, who died last year.
But just like the subsequent letter from Molefi Oliphant, then the SAFA president and leaked to Britain’s Press Association, Jordaan addressed his directly to Valcke.
Although the South Africa government has strongly made the point that the payment was made four years after the vote for 2010, it has not explained fully why it shied away from paying it directly instead of involving FIFA. Or why such a large sum was not made public at the time.
In his US court testimony that has made worldwide headlines, the FBI’s top whistleblower Chuck Blazer confirmed: “I and others on the FIFA executive committee agreed to accept bribes in conjunction with the selection of South Africa as the host nation for the 2010 World Cup.”
Jordaan’s letter casts more doubt on South Africa’s position that the payment was a legitimate donation as part of the World Cup legacy programme. Local media say it fuels allegations in the US that the money was a bribe disguised as a development contribution for Caribbean football, run at the time by now disgraced former CONCACAF chief Jack Warner.
The letter was dated December 2010, 2007, three weeks before the first of three tranches moved from FIFA’s accounts to one controlled by Warner. Prosecutors claim Warner pocketed most of the money himself and passed $750 000 on to Blazer. A third unnamed official was allegedly also intended to benefit.
Jordaan, who absent from this week’s South African government news conference, reportedly tells Valcke in the letter: “The South African government has undertaken to pay an amount equivalent to US$10-million towards the 2010 FIFA World Cup diaspora legacy programme”.
Jordaan’s letter reportedly cited Jabu Moleketi, then deputy finance minister and a member of his 2010 local organising committee (LOC), as having “recommended that this money be paid over to FIFA” for onward distribution.
The letter apparently continues: “I have subsequently had a discussion with the minister of foreign affairs, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who has said that the [government] funds should rather be paid over to the [LOC]. In view of this determination, I want to suggest that Fifa deducts this amount from the LOC’s future operational budget and deals directly with the diaspora legacy support programme.”
Moleketi claimed on Thursday that the letter was “a fabrication”, and denied having “a conversation of that nature” with Jordaan. But the proposed triangular arrangement is claimed to have been a deliberate move by South Africa to cover up the payment. One argument suggests South Africa should in fact have been proud of making such donations public.
Oliphant’s subsequent letter to Valcke said the money should be administered by Warner but the South Africans insist this was perfectly normal procedure since Warner, from Trinidad, ran the Caribbean region and was not under investigation at the time.
Jordaan is not making any comment on the new development but told a local council meeting he is fed up with being targeted when he not mentioned anywhere in the US charge sheet.
“I have been crucified and found guilty by the media, but nobody can say I have been involved,” he said.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734904153labto1734904153ofdlr1734904153owedi1734904153sni@w1734904153ahsra1734904153w.wer1734904153dna1734904153