By Andrew Warshaw
June 3 – With precision timing just when the organisation’s new president Gianni Infantino was under mounting scrutiny for a raft of allegedly suspect manoeuvres to boost his authority, FIFA’s American lawyers hit back today by revealing that Sepp Blatter, Jerome Valcke and Markus Kattner awarded themselves pay rises and bonuses worth $80 million over five years.
Releasing comprehensive documents showing the full extent of the apparent avarice, Quinn Emanuel, the firm hired by FIFA to conduct an investigation into alleged widespread corruption, found FIFA’s former president and general-secretary and its recently fired finance chief approved a series of unethical bonuses and made “a coordinated effort” to “enrich themselves” between 2011 and 2015.
Publication of the trio’s contractual arrangements came 24 hours after documents and electronic data were seized during the latest raid on FIFA’s offices, including that of Kattner, by Swiss authorities.
But while Blatter and Valcke are suspected of criminal mismanagement and have been banned from football, no criminal proceedings have been opened against Kattner whose supporters believe was targeted in order to take the heat off Infantino’s own allegedly suspicious activities.
Quinn Emanuel said the evidence uncovered by its own internal investigation would be shared with the Swiss Attorney General’s office and the US Department of Justice and Swiss law may have been breached.
“The evidence appears to reveal a coordinated effort by three former top officials of FIFA to enrich themselves through annual salary increases, World Cup bonuses and other incentives totalling more than CHF 79 million – in just the last five years,” Bill Burck, a partner with Quinn Emanuel, said.
“Additionally, FIFA will refer the matter of these contracts and payments to the Ethics Committee for its review,.”
The documents revealed that Valcke and Kattner had long-term severance deals and indemnity against any legal action, whether they were dismissed for ‘just cause’ or not. Evidence seized in Thursday’s raid, the lawyers added, “raised serious questions about the way a series of problematic contract amendments … were approved”.
“These amendments resulted in massive payouts – amounting to tens of millions of dollars – to the former FIFA officials in the form of salaries and bonuses between the years 2011 and 2015.”
FIFA said that before 2013 those who signed the contracts were “in principle” also the ones who approved them. “They had the authority they needed, and they simply told payroll and HR (human resources), the department generally in charge for employment contracts at FIFA and which reported to Mr Kattner, how much should be paid out and to whom.”
There were also questions over the compensation sub-committee which oversaw officials’ compensation from 2013 onwards. Contracts were extended until 2019, with “big increases in base salaries and bonuses” as well as the guaranteed severance payments. These amounted to SFr17.5 million and SFr 9.8 million to Valcke and Kattner respectively in the event that their contracts were terminated, which was always likely if Blatter lost the last election.
The three officials pocketed SFr23 million as “special bonuses” awarded four months after the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, FIFA said. But sources close to Kattner, who was acting as deputy general secretary and was fired with immediate effect a week ago, insist that however sizeable his compensation and bonuses package, everything was above board and did not in any way constitute illegal activity.
They point out that FIFA’s auditors never flagged up any wrongdoing and that the bonus programme was part of FIFA’s official compensation policy.
Details of the inflated bonus payments came on the same day that Swiss and German media published further reports of an alleged conspiracy led by Infantino and his legal chief Marco Villiger to delete minutes of a recent meeting in Mexico at which officials discussed how to get rid of anti-corruption guru Domenico Scala.
Scala, the former head of the audit and compliance committee, was responsible for setting Infantino’s $2 salary which he described during the same meeting as an “insult”.
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