By Andrew Warshaw
October 23 – The bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups has spiralled out of control tonight after further dramatic revelations in the Sunday Times that named Spain/Portugal and Qatar as allegedly agreeing to trade block votes and quoted a former FIFA boss as saying he knew the names of officials who were willing to take bribes.
Michel Zen-Ruffinen, a former secretary general of FIFA, said he could can identify Executive Committee members who were willing to be bought in order to secure their support.
Zen-Ruffinen was caught on camera going through a list of FIFA members, saying how much their votes would cost, and describing one of them “as the biggest gangster on earth”
He added that Spain/Portugal, bidding against Russia, England and Holland/Belgium for 2018, had struck a deal with Qatar, which is targeting 2022, to exchange votes.
World Cup bidders need the votes of 13 of FIFA’s 24 Executive Committee members to get over the line and Zen-Ruffinen said: “People expect a battle between Russia and England but they are very much disturbed by the alliance with Qatar, because if Spain start with seven (votes), which nobody was expecting…that’s a real alliance.
“It’s bound, tacked with a nice ribbon and that’s really problematic.
“This is the most problematic thing.
“And I was informed about it last week.
“And this is not just a rumour.
“That’s a fact.”
Zen-Ruffinen, a 51-year-old lawyer, worked for 16 years at football’s world governing body, latterly as Sepp Blatter’s right-hand man before being sacked.
The pair fell out after Zen-Ruffinen, chief organiser of the 2002 World Cup, produced a range of allegations of mismanagement and even questioned Blatter’s dictatorial style.
Now, inadvertently or not, he has exacted revenge by sticking the knife into the very heart of FIFA’s administration.
The Sunday Times, using undercover reporters posing as lobbyists, charged that the suave Zen-Ruffinen was willing to be hired for £210,000 ($329,000) to arrange approaches to key FIFA officials to see what inducements they wanted in exchange for their votes.
He maintained that two FIFA voting members, both unidentified by name, would be willing to discuss financial inducements, and a third whom he described as “the guy you can have with ladies and not money …”
A fourth was then described, remarkably, as “the biggest gangster you will find on earth”, whose vote would cost a minimum $500,000 (£319,000).
Zen-Ruffinen, who did not know he was being filmed or taped, apparently threatened to take out an injunction preventing publication of the second successive instalment of the Sunday Times expose, claiming he had only been recounting “well-known rumours”.
The latest cash-for-votes crisis will plunge FIFA into further disarray.
Already two Executive Committee members, Reynald Temarii and Amos Adamu, have been suspended provisionally pending a final hearing by FIFA’s Ethics Committee on November 17 while two bidding candidates are being examined for alleged collusion.
Horse-trading is forbidden among bidding nations and until now, FIFA has declined to name the two contenders being accused. Now the organisation will be under pressure to do so following the Sunday Times’ latest revelations.
Not only that. Blatter is standing unopposed for a fourth term of office next May but the spate of corruption allegations could now be unused as a means of unseating him if another candidate decides to come forward.
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