FIFA has recently declined invitation by USA’s Senate Consumer Protection subcommittee to answer questions regarding the recent allegations of corruption and bribery at FIFA as well as human rights abuses believed to have occurred in connection with the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. FIFA has the right to do so because it is not the UN and Blatter is no the UN Secretary General where the United States accounted for 22 percent of the total regular UN’s budget every year since 2000, and 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. But the invitation arouses our curiosity further to know, who is behind it? Two things came to mind when I heard about the invitation, one is that, a report in The Nation magazine by Lee Fang in 2014 suggested that while the number of 12,281 registered lobbyists in the US was a decrease since 2002, lobbying activity was increasing and “going underground” as lobbyists use “increasingly sophisticated strategies” to obscure their activity. Could the invitation be a work of FIFA’s corporate sponsors? The other thing is that, while the indictment to FIFIA’S senior officials continue to go forward, one has to ask, how the KPMG the auditing financial consultant that FIFA does business with, other supervisory agencies and partners such the US anti-corruption and fraud authorities, Swiss authorities and the Interpol, failed to blow the whistle on the spot of FIFA’S wrongdoings?

Fifa boss

 Now, with the revelation that FIFA’s former executive committee member Chuck Blazer has been working as an undercover agent for U.S. prosecutors for over a decade cooperating with the US government’s investigation in world football’s governing body, the 1998 Olympic Salt City’s scandal comes to mind. In 1998, Swiss IOC member Marc Hodler revealed that several of his fellow officials had accepted perks in return for voting to award Salt Lake City the 2002 Winter Olympics. Clearly, the Salt Lake City’s crisis was a pretty serious case by any measure that somehow evaporated in the backyard of the US legal system. In contrast to FIFA, the IOC was able to put the scandal to rest quite amazingly. FIFA seems to have a quite relevant yet complex case, where there is power struggle among its members, in relation to the amount of power each member’s vote has in deciding on major issues. This is in addition, to the dishonoring behavior by Blazer, Blazer’s alike and of those who weren’t pleased by Blatter’s ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ approach in managing FIFA’s business. A discontent that is rather evident in a number of reactionary positions reflected in various forms, such as statements by Platini, UEFA president and his indirect threat to withdraw UEFA from FIFA prior to Blatter’s recent resignation, followed by actions from the US Attorney General indicting number of FIFA executives,  contentious comments throughout the unfolding corruption proceedings by FA Chairman Greg Deyk, threats by Visa, Coca-Cola, Carlsberg, Adidas, and others to reassess sponsorship, David Gill who was supposed to take up Britain’s FIFA vice-presidency and who called upon Blatter to resign when there was no shred of evidence against him, Prince William who called on FIFA to ‘put sport first’ amid the corruption scandal in the indictment stage. the ugly statements by former Germany representative to FIFA, Theo Zwanziger on Qatar, and nevertheless, the recent Wyrd display of a British Prankster who seemed to be  influenced by lobbyist propaganda when he showered Sepp Blatter with dollar bills at FIFA press conference.

FIFA’s crises is nothing but lobby-driven and to an extent resolute resistance from the Europe’s camp to Blatter’s transactional leadership which continued to corner them from acting as ‘FIFA’s security council’. Ironically, this is taking place at the time when without dispute, the majority of consumers of FIFA’s products today are by large Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans and Latinos. This is why the shy argument kept growing “Does it make sense that the island of Fiji should have similar voting power to England, Germany and Italy in the FIFA’s Congress?” Now, with the well documented shortcomings of the pre-bargain US’s legal system in similar cases and with Blazer’s nasty business citing along the Salt Lake City’s scandal, FIFA’s crises, need to go beyond what the legal outcome look like. FIFA must restructure its governance system by reinventing an equation where by running FIFA should be based on merited attributes rather than by ethnocentrism or geopolitics. The new boss must not seek what some call it ‘footballing security council’, but be proactive in setting and enforcing ethical standards and values that shows genuine respect to FIFA’s members by exercising fair play in all facets of the organization’s tiqui-taca.

 As to whether or not Mr. Blatter is responsible for fraud or corruption committed by some of his colleagues, I strongly believe that until there is concrete and tangible evidence that demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt he is responsible, he is definitely not. This is because, primary investigations indicated that the corruption is mostly on deals between FIFA, sports marketing groups, and broadcast corporations for the television rights to air the World Cup and other international soccer tournaments which are a delegated responsibilities. Needless to say, FIFA is not the United States of America where there is ‘trias politica’ to prevent abuse of power from any of its executives, or has the FBI and other professional monitoring agencies. Now, are there entities or individuals being paid to hold a certain view? No body knows, and if the KPMG, the prominent Auditing Accounting and Consulting Firm who gave FIFA a clean bill of financial health for 16 consecutive years failed to raise any flag of any type during this period and has not been pointed at as a fiasco auditor, or a conspirator, what makes Blatter a conspirator or even responsible? And if those who either acted individually out of greed or who served themselves and other initiators of the whole fraud and corruption scandal are not responsible, who else should be?

Elrashid Elobeid is soccer analyst, sports & sports media management consultant and can be reached  on [email protected]