World press call for Blatter’s head over ‘stench of corruption’

Geneva

‘Get out!”: world media Thursday demanded that Fifa’s veteran president Joseph Blatter step down following the shock arrests of top officials in the organisation suspected of corruption and fraud.

“He must go!” shouted the front page of the Le Matin daily in Switzerland, where Fifa is based and where its annual congress kicked off yesterday.

“Blatter has no more credibility,” it added, a day after seven football officials were swept up in a police sting at a luxury Zurich hotel. Its compatriot Le Temps hailed the arrests as marking “an end to impunity” long enjoyed by international football’s main body.

US authorities said nine football officials were among 14 people facing up to 20 years in jail if found guilty in the long-running corruption case involving more than $150 million in bribes. Blatter, who has headed Fifa for 17 years and is set to stand for reelection on today, was not on the list.

The US investigation said South African officials paid $10 million in bribes to host the 2010 tournament, while Swiss investigators raided Fifa’s Zurich headquarters as part of an investigation into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.

The Times of South Africa slammed the “World Cup of fraud”, decrying that “even South Africa’s 2010 triumph” had been “blighted by Fifa corruption”. In Britain, the Times handed Fifa a “Red Card” in an editorial warning that “Sepp Blatter is bringing world football into disrepute”.

“He must step down and open the way for sweeping changes at Fifa,” the paper said. The Guardian meanwhile held its nose at “The stench of corruption”, while the Sun tabloid decried the role of “Sepptic Blatter”, lamenting that he had allowed the development of “a cancer at the very heart of the beautiful game”.

The Sun also suggested Britain should be handed the 2018 World Cup. In Germany, the Bild tabloid front page simply called for Blatter to “Get out!”, while an article inside Europe’s most read paper referred to him as “The Godfather”, demanding “in the name of millions of football fans” that he step down.

Even if Blatter was not personally involved in the suspected corruption, the paper questioned whether he “is covering for a criminal association, which in turn is keeping him in power?”

France’s Liberation continued the mafia theme with “Fifa Nostra” emblazoned on its front page beside a mock-up of the cover of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather book featuring a football on a puppeteer’s strings. In football-crazy Italy, the La Repubblica said “an earthquake has hit Blatter’s Fifa”.

“It’s official: the world of football is a world of thieves,” the paper wrote. In The Netherlands, De Telegraaf splashed “Fifa the fraud” across its front page. “The evidence seems overwhelming, thanks mainly to informants.

Blatter is in fact at the head of a gang of fraudsters,” the paper said, calling for “a new start”, without Blatter. Sweden’s paper of reference Dagens Nyheter meanwhile suggested Blatter might manage to weather the storm.

“There is no president of any federation that could survive such a scandal, but Sepp Blatter is not just any president, and Fifa is not just any federation,” it said. In Australia, which sank some US$40 million into its unsuccessful 2022 cup bid, media hailed the investigation that could get to the bottom of allegations bribery was behind the award to Qatar.

NON-NONSENSE US ATTORNEY COMES OUT SWINGING

Just weeks after taking office as America’s top law enforcer, Loretta Lynch has dealt a stinging blow to world football’s governing body Fifa.

In announcing corruption indictments against 14 people including nine football officials, Lynch followed up on a probe she had begun and waged tenaciously as an aggressive, no-nonsense US attorney in New York. In her confirmation hearings before the Senate in late April, Lynch pledged to go after white collar crime, saying no one was above the law. On Wednesday, she kept her word.

“The indictment alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States,” Lynch said.
Lynch, 55, is a blend of “steel and velvet,” in the words of veteran Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein.

In appointing Lynch back in November, President Barack Obama said she would “bring to bear her experience as a tough, independent, and well-respected prosecutor.”

She is the first African American woman to hold the attorney general’s post, and took over from Eric Holder, the first black to have the job.
As US attorney in New York Lynch came to be known as a relentless federal prosecutor who put mobsters and terror suspects behind bars.
Now she is expected to go heavy on defending civil rights and prosecuting crimes on Wall Street.

It is somewhat of a surprise that she has gone after Fifa right off the bat in her own country, where the sport is far less popular than basketball or American football.

TWO GENERATIONS OF OFFICIALS

However before coming to Washington, Lynch had served as US attorney for the eastern district of New York and handled many corruption cases, including the Fifa probe.

She did so from Brooklyn, the same New York borough where she revealed Wednesday’s 47 count indictment and called for the extradition of suspects detained in Switzerland. Fifa was preparing to hold an election today in Zurich in which its leader Sepp Blatter is seeking a new term.

“They corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and to enrich themselves,” Lynch said of the suspects.

“They did this over and over, year after year, tournament after tournament,” she said. “Two generations of soccer officials,” she said, “used their positions of trust within their respective organizations to solicit bribes from sports marketers in exchange for the commercial rights to their soccer tournaments.” Lynch, who went to Harvard law school, promised to work with other countries in order to “end any such corrupt practices, to root out misconduct, and to bring wrongdoers to justice.”

Lynch thanked international colleagues taking part in the probe, particularly the Swiss, and promised a fair trial for the suspects after they are extradited. She said the suspects had “abused the US financial system and violated US law, and we intend to hold them accountable.”
Lynch was named US attorney in New York by president Bill Clinton, and has held the job twice.

The North Carolina native began her career in a New York law firm before being appointed US district attorney.
From 2002 to 2007, she worked as a special adviser to the prosecutor of the international court handling the Rwanda genocide. (AFP)

PUTIN

Russia switched the focus of its tensions with America from Ukraine to the football pitch Thursday with President Vladimir Putin lashing out over the US probe into Fifa.

The Kremlin strongman condemned the arrest of seven top FIFA officials, accusing Washington of trying to oust football boss Sepp Blatter after he resisted pressure to stop Russia hosting the 2018 World Cup.

“We know about the pressure that has been put on (Blatter) with the aim of banning the holding of the 2018 World Cup in Russia,” Putin said in comments released yesterday.

“His general position is that sport and politics should be kept apart.”

The arrests Wednesday in Zurich two days ahead of a FIFA presidential vote was “clearly an attempt to block the reelection of Blatter,” Putin said, alleging the US was trying to “spread its jurisdiction to other countries”.

Putin has made opposing what he portrays as US meddling in the world a key plank of his foreign policy and uses claims he is checking American expansionism to bolster his popularity at home and deflect all criticism.

Relations between Moscow and the West have slumped to their lowest point since the Cold War and some hawkish US senators have called for the 2018 World Cup to be withdrawn from Russia over allegations Moscow is fuelling the separatist conflict in Ukraine.

CENTURY OF EXISTENCE

Fifa is facing the biggest crisis in its century of existence after Swiss police detained the football officials on allegations they took more than $150 million in bribes. The United States wants the seven extradited to face trial there.

A separate Swiss investigation is also looking into alleged wrongdoing in the allocation of the 2018 event to Russia and the 2022 championship to Qatar.

The Kremlin has lavished vast sums on hosting international sporting events — most notably the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi — that are used to burnish Putin’s image.

While FIFA and Russian officials have dismissed the possibility that the World Cup in Russia is in doubt, analysts said Putin was at the least concerned the event might be overshadowed by controversy.

“The president is clearly worried about the World Cup in 2018,” Konstantin Kalachev, head of the Political Expert Group, told AFP.
“He not only has doubts about whether it will take place or not but he is also nervous that the atmosphere around it will be ruined.”
Russia’s state media has quickly turned the investigations into Fifa into part of a broader conspiracy against Russia.

Government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta said the arrest of the top officials made it “clear that the United States want to get full control over FIFA, which as an international and purely sporting organisation has been acting independently as it should.”

Buy Kremlin line

Many Russians appear to buy the Kremlin line that Washington is out to get Russia, with an online poll from leading sports daily Sovietsky Sport showing 36 percent of respondents thought the FIFA arrests were aimed against the 2018 World Cup.

Kalachev said Putin’s claims that the Fifa investigation is part of a US plot demonstrate his wider belief that he is defending Russia against foreign foes, from Ukraine to the backrooms of Fifa headquarters.

“He genuinely feels that he is in a besieged fortress,” Kalachev said.

“This is not just a tool to bind together the majority, but also his real belief that Russia is encircled by enemies.” (AFP)

MARADONA CHEERS ARRESTS
Buenos Aires

Argentine football great Diego Maradona on Wednesday applauded the arrest of top Fifa officials in an anti-corruption sting, and warned that Sepp Blatter, the president of world football’s governing body, may be next.

Maradona said he was “enjoying” the news of the arrest of seven officials, including two Fifa vice-presidents, in a dawn raid at a luxury hotel in Zurich. They face deportation to the United States on charges of accepting more than $150 million in bribes, and the outspoken former star said Blatter could follow in their footsteps. “Watch out, Blatter may have to go the United States to explain himself. They’ve been after him for 10 years,” he told Buenos Aires radio station La Red.

The crackdown came two days before Blatter seeks a fifth term as the head of the multi-billion-dollar organization. Maradona has a long history of scathing attacks on Blatter dating back to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, when he protested the decision to schedule matches in the midday heat.

He has lobbied against Blatter’s bid for a new term as Fifa president, writing in the Telegraph this week that he had become a “dictator for life” and the organization “a playground for the corrupt.”

“I have been saying this for a long time. They said I was crazy. Today the FBI spoke the truth,” he said Wednesday.

“We’ll have to see if Blatter wins after this. The Americans did an impeccable job,” he added. Maradona, 54, was considered the greatest player of his day, playing in four World Cups. (AFP)