By Andrew Warshaw
February 3 – The growing influence of Domenico Scala as the prime mover in the drive to clean up FIFA has been further underlined by this week’s unprecedented ruling to block $20 million of payments to CONCACAF and CONMEBOL, the two confederations most seriously damaged by football’s ongoing corruption scandal.
Insideworldfootball can reveal that it was FIFA’s Audit and Compliance committee, chaired by Scala, which took the unilateral decision to impose the stringent sanction on the two regions that cover the whole of the Americas.
Although Scala is not a candidate for the FIFA presidency, it is becoming abundantly clear that whoever wins the vote on February 26 will have to deal with the canny Swiss-Italian who has been at the forefront of the reform proposals that will be put to the vote at the electoral congress.
In addition to heading the audit and compliance committee, part of whose job is to police financial wrongdoing and which works closely with ethics investigations, Scala also oversees the at times thorny election process to succeed Sepp Blatter.
Whilst the ruling to halt funding to CONMEBOL and CONCACAF is clearly a direct result of the spate of arrests and charges involving senior officials caught up in the US-led probe into widespread racketeering and money laundering, Scala faces accusations that he has hit the confederations when they are already down and are trying to repair the damage to their tarnished organisations. Also that by halting the payments, smaller federations who badly need the money for development purposes and who may have done nothing wrong are being unfairly hit.
Both confederations are striving to implement their own reforms and new management, but Scala is apparently not convinced they are capable of governing themselves fairly and honestly for the benefit of all their members. Not yet anyway. Nor is he satisfied that enough evidence has yet come to light to suggest sufficient progress has been made in terms of guaranteeing financial transparency.
Although Scala is making no comment as to what happens next, FIFA said it was “assessing further steps … to increase the level of assurance which may again enable FIFA to release such funds in the future.” Yet it didn’t provide any details in terms of what kind of compliance proof was actually needed.
CONCACAF, currently operating without a president, insists it has met all requests for documents to ”ensure the issue is resolved in a timely manner.” But a source with knowledge of the case said the audit and compliance committee had serious concerns, given the two confederations’ recent track record, about the way the money might have been used and was anxious to prevent it being squandered and falling into the wrong hands, as has been the recent trend.
“These two confederations are lacking in terms of both leadership and compliance which is needed to be entitled to receive such payments,” said the source. “FIFA cannot make payments to an entity that cannot guarantee the money will be used in the way it should be.”
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