By Andrew Warshaw in Zurich
September 14 – As the world’s media descended on Zurich for the eagerly awaited latest developments in the US and Swiss investigations into alleged widespread malpractise surrounding FIFA, the organisation’s former anti-corruption advisor said Sepp Blatter himself should be questioned over the sale of television rights to disgraced former CONCACAF boss Jack Warner.
Swiss broadcaster SRF on Friday published a contract signed by Blatter in 2005 that sold the Warner-controlled Caribbean Football Union rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups for a combined $600,000.
Warner, at the time one of FIFA’s senior powerbrokers and a firm Blatter supporter, licensed the rights to a company controlled by his family according to reports. They were then sold on to Jamaica-based broadcaster SportsMax.
Mark Pieth, who was head of Independent Governance Committee, the first body to propose a series of reforms to FIFA but since disbanded, told reporters in Zurich that Blatter could find himself subject to a criminal investigation.
“Blatter has to defend himself against a form of embezzlement charges. That’s a topic they need to discuss,” Pieth said of the ongoing investigation being led by Switzerland’s attorney general even though it is primarily about the 2018 and 2022 World ballots.
Warner was indicted in May in a US probe of soccer corruption implicating senior FIFA officials, though it is the separate Swiss case which could technically threaten Blatter.
“They have prima facie evidence. That means they have to open an investigation,” Pieth said on the sidelines of an international meeting of federal prosecutors attended by the attorney generals of the US and Switzerland who were due to address reporters later.
Although Swiss attorney general Michael Lauber’s probe has long believed to focus on those 2018 and 2022 bidding contests, Pieth said: “The investigation here in Zurich is much bigger. It is really about the whole institution (of FIFA) and what they have been doing over the last whatever 20 years.”
The Basel governance guru advised FIFA on reform between 2011 and 2013.
Meanwhile Jose Maria Marin, former head of the Brazilian FA and the man who ran the 2014 World Cup organising committee, has revealed he will not appeal if Swiss authorities accede to an extradition request from the United States later this week.
Marin, 83, was one of the seven senior football officials arrested by Swiss police, on behalf of US justice authorities, two days before the FIFA Congress in May. All but one have remained in detention in Switzerland facing extradition on conspiracy, fraud and money-laundering charges. The exception was Jeffrey Webb, the former CONCACAF boss now under house arrest in the US, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges levelled against him.
Ironically today’s news conference by the respective attorney generals of the US and Switzerland was being staged at the very same hotel where Webb gave his final media briefing, stressing the need for transparency, on the fringes of the FIFA congress shortly before he was arrested in the same city.
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