By Andrew Warshaw
August 7 – Former International Olympic Committee director general Francois Carrard (pictured) has emerged as a possible chairman of FIFA’s reform taskforce set up in the light of the unprecedented corruption scandal that has enveloped the organisation.
“I have been approached and I will make a decision next week,” Carrard, who held the post from 1989 to 2003, told Reuters.
FIFA announced the creation of the 11-member Task Force last month, with 10 members to come from its six confederations plus a neutral chairman from outside the sport.
Initially, FIFA’s independent audit and compliance committee chief Domenico Scala was touted as a possible chairman but Carrard has now emerged as the favourite to lead the panel, charged with overseeing concrete, robust change as FIFA attempts to get to grips with a crisis sparked by 14 leading football officials marketing executives being charged by the US Justice Department in an indictment that outlined massive corruption, including bribes and kickbacks of more than $150 million over 24 years.
Significantly, Carrard was at the IOC during its own Salt Lake City scandal which exposed widespread corruption. Ten IOC members were expelled or forced to resign.
The Task Force has its work cut out making sufficient progress in time for the next meeting of FIFA’s executive committee in Zurich on September 24-25. So far only Africa has announced its panel members, naming Hani Abo Rida of Egypt and Constant Omari from the Democratic Republic of Congo as its two representatives.
How their selection will go down with FIFA’s increasingly anxious sponsors and anti-corruption campaigners, who favour the entire task force being independent, must be open to question.
Both Africans are members of the FIFA exco itself and choosing them seems bound to be viewed as somewhat counter-productive, given that they form part of FIFA’s existing inner circle and may have vested interests in terms of the reforms proposed which include term limits, disclosure of salaries and integrity checks.
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