On Monday Insideworldfootball ran a story titled ‘Whistle blown on FIFA whistleblower fraudster Mersiades’. The story was a pick-up from German public broadcaster ZDF’s interview with discredited Australian whistleblower Bonita Mersiades.
To re-cap the important part of the story: Mersiades, one of the FIFA whistleblowers in the FIFA World Cup bid investigation, has Australian court convictions for defrauding an Australian government department that employed her.
This is quite serious.
It is not like losing a tax dispute in court or being chased for multiple unpaid parking tickets, for example. It is about her government employer finding a fraud committed by her to be so serious that they felt obliged to take it to a public court. No out-of-court of settlement or gentle word about bad judgement and how we can put this right – a full blown court case. She lost.
The court summaries are all in the public domain and they do not make flattering reading. Our original story can be read at http://www.insideworldfootball.com/fifa/16723-whistle-blown-on-fifa-whistleblower-fraudster-mersiades
Mersiades, despite being a convicted fraudster, still managed to get a job at the Football Federation Australia. These days, having been fired by the Australians, she rails against FIFA corruption, specifically the corruption that she has identified within FIFA but which she can’t quite substantiate. Unlike her own fraud conviction, which was substantiated. There is of course an irony here.
The Insideworldfootball version of the story has created a Twitter storm. It is all there on Twitter and you can check for yourself. There is some spicy stuff in the reaction our story caused, and quite a lot of irrelevant nonsense. But, most pertinently, no questioning of the story itself, or, remarkably, of Mersiades and her efficacy.
The Twitter fury targeted at Insideworldfootball was driven by Germany’s chief FIFA critic Jens Weinreich and his English equivalent Andrew Jennings – journalists who have made names for themselves pointing the finger of corruption at sport and most recently and most fervently at FIFA.
This has resulted to a series of accusations and statements, unrelated to our original story about Mersiades, but about Insideworldfootball and its editor Paul Nicholson (for the avoidance of doubt that’s me). These probably do need answering because the majority of the accusations are based on fabrication.
But, in response to some of their statements, here is the truth, which is in fact rather dull:
1. Peter Hargitay is not a shareholder in Inside World Football Ltd or Inside World Football AG.
2. Paul Nicholson does know Peter Hargitay – like most people involved in football media and journalism.
3. Paul Nicholson did make a sponsorship proposal to Qatar that involved Qatar spending money if they bought the sales pitch. The end of the proposal was reproduced on Twitter but not the proposal itself (why not?). In any case the Private Eye fabrication killed the Qatari appetite for sponsorship and cost IWF and its journalist contributors a lot of money (sorry IWF guys but I’m still trying to get them on board – come on Qatar, you spend money everywhere else, how about some with us?).
4. The sponsorship proposal was that we would give dedicated space on Insideworldfootball to cover all the activity of the Qatar build towards 2022 – it is actually an interesting story for a trade publication and for the bulk of our readers who are in the football business. The editorial would also cover progress being made towards workers rights etc in country – remember this was a sales pitch. But generally, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if progress isn’t made it is hard to see that they will keep 2022. It is equally hard to see them screwing this up. The debate has moved on people – you need to keep up despite your old-school social prejudices.
5. The proposal was sent in a private email to one person in Qatar. Either Jennings/Weinreich hacked my email (this is illegal activity) or it was forwarded by someone in Qatar. Which is it? Everyone would like to know.
For those readers who can’t be bothered to wade through Twitter to see the level of abuse, one post stands out as characteristic of their ‘argument’. The tweet was by Jennings and retweeted by Weinreich.
The tweet was “Here is the fraud story that Hargitay and his lowlife little bumboy Nicholson don’t want you to read”. How about that for old-school in these politically correct days? Bumboy – a homosexual male who engages in anal sex for money, in case you were wondering.
Unreconstructed homophobia to make a point about fraud? Really? The only word that seems to be missing from the tweet is ‘black’, but I guess that by missing that word out it counts as the only accurate/truthful element of the tweet.
Now if they were ordinary football employees working in football I would expect I would have a complaint to FIFA’s anti-discriminatory folk. Even they might feel compelled to act against that if it was from someone within their own jurisdiction.
What do you think Mr Webb? Perhaps some of the gay rights people could help me out here with the education process with these testosterone-pumped trouser chunks – but I think they will resist education or normally accepted levels of social behaviour.
To the point, I am not sure how any of the above relates to our story reporting that FIFA whistleblower Bonita Mersiades is a convicted fraudster.
Mersiades picks up the same themes (minus the gay innuendos) in an editorial on Aussie website www.footballtoday.com.au, where she also says that she has every right to criticise FIFA.
Of course she does, and there has been no suggestion that she doesn’t have the right.
But others have the right to know that for someone who shouts so loudly about corruption that she is in fact a convicted fraudster herself. It brings a bit of balance to what are increasingly looking like accusations that can’t be proved (accusations we have reported on this site multiple times as well but tried not to do so in quite the hysterical fashion required for street cred within the hyper-ventilating Twitterati).
Interestingly in her article Mersiades complains on behalf of hard-pressed Aussie taxpayers. The same taxpayers, presumably, she was convicted of defrauding.
And as for my new twitter chums. Defending fraudsters by fabricating stories about others to deflect attention says more about their propaganda and methods than it does about those they set out to deliberately defame.
Hopefully this column can now return to ranting in its own unique and eclectic style for its future editions. And written by its mix of anonymous contributors, some of them even black people, some of them might even be gay or transgender (should I be asking them after all, I never thought).
Contact the writer of this column at moc.l1734857668labto1734857668ofdlr1734857668owedi1734857668sni@n1734857668osloh1734857668cin.l1734857668uap1734857668. And anyone who needs my phone number, the bullying twitter troll Mr Geistreich posted it on his twitter feed.