By Andrew Warshaw
January 7 – FIFA’s ethics committee has opened formal proceedings against Jerome Valcke after investigators recommended a nine-year ban against the organisation’s 55-year-old general secretary.
The ethics committee, which has increasingly taken on the mantle of feared watchdog in the corruption crisis that has brought FIFA to its knees, has already extended an initial 90-day suspension on Valcke by another 45 days to process the case.
He is charged with accepting gifts, conflicts of interest, breaches of confidentiality and loyalty, and failing to cooperate with investigators.
Valcke had already been relieved of his duties by the FIFA administration in September before the ethics case was opened and now Hans-Joachim Eckert, FIFA’s ethics judge, has formally opened proceedings “based on the final report submitted by the investigatory chamber.”
He has been accused of “misuse of expenses and other infringements of FIFA’s rules and regulations.”
Sepp Blatter’s former right-hand man has faced considerable scrutiny over being party to the infamous $10 million payment paid by South Africa, ostensibly as a donation to the African diaspora in the Caribbean as part of the country’s 2010 World Cup legacy programme but which ended up in the hands of disgraced former CONCACAF president Jack Warner who was recently banned for life.
The money is said to have been transferred in 2008 from a FIFA bank account following a request to Valcke from the South African football authorities. Valcke, identified as having processed the transfer, has vehemently denied he did anything wrong insisting he strictly followed normal protocol.
Valcke first discovered he had been cast aside while on a charter flight to Russia where he had been heading for celebrations marking 1,000 days to the country’s staging of the 2018 World Cup. He turned round in mid-flight and his FIFA duties have since been taken over on an interim basis by FIFA finance director Markus Kattner.
Valcke says the payment in question was authorised by then-finance committee chairman Julio Grondona. US investigators probing the corruption scandal claim the money was a bribe for CONCACAF officials to support South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 World Cup.
Valcke’s legal team has described the ethics announcement as “a self-serving public relations effort to wrongly attack Mr. Valcke in a desperate attempt to try to prove that FIFA can police itself. Mr. Valcke did absolutely nothing wrong as any independent and fair review of the facts would establish.”
Eckert will make his final ruling within a few weeks once Valcke has been given a chance to clear his name in person. But he always intended to leave FIFA anyway after the election of a new president on February 26.
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