Fifa’s scrambled response to the tsunami which swamped the Baur au Lac was to sniff at the accusations in the indictment, say it was cooperating as ‘the injured party’ and argue the charges all related to deals done in the Americas, not the clean Alpine air of Zurich. Sepp Blatter would complain forever after that ‘the Americans’ were sore at losing the 2022 World Cup vote and had sought to sabotage Fifa and his presidential election by portraying American corruption as Fifa’s. The men arrested, and Blazer who had pleaded guilty already, were foisted on Fifa by the confederations’ right to seats on the executive committee: Fifa could not control them, they argued.
But there was that one particular allegation lurking in the centre of the indictment which did strike at the heart of Fifa, and it was the most monstrous and unpalatable of all. It was the jaw-dropping story, which had come from Blazer’s own admissions, that the South African government, and its FA’s 2010 World Cup bid committee, had paid the $10m bribe to Jack Warner to buy his, Blazer’s and another Fifa executive committee member’s vote. The indictment said that this payment was to be paid to the Caribbean Football Union for apparent legacy inititatives, to ‘support the African diaspora’.
It was indeed the case that as part of the rhetoric in which the South Africa World Cup was wrapped, the tournament’s historic significance for the country liberated from apartheid and for Africa itself, one of the promised legacies was some work, never really defined, for the diaspora. The appalling nature of this crime, if it is true the money was a bribe, is that the African diaspora is understood to be, essentially, the descendants of people wrenched out of their African homes over generations and taken into slavery. To provide some tangible social programme in the name of addressing that historic crime, or, anyway, just to share with deprived African-descendant communities some of the fortunes from the first World Cup in Africa, which made Fifa $3.5bn, was consistently expressed as a noble purpose. The South African president himself at the time of the World Cup, Thabo Mbeki, made this legacy part of his bid to the Fifa executive committee, saying: ‘The millions of Africans on the continent and the African diaspora have embarked on an exciting human journey. This is a journey away from a history of conflict, repression and endemic poverty.’
If, though, the ‘African diaspora’ had been conjured as a disguise for money which was just a bribe, to be pocketed by three men personally for their votes, this was cynicism beyond conscience.
The denials would pour in immediately after Loretta Lynch unleashed her indictment. While the South African government initially said it was looking into the claims, its FA and Danny Jordaan, the football official turned politician who had been garlanded for leading the successful bid and the tournament organising committee, were indignant. Fifa distanced itself completely at first, and claimed anyway that the money was for a legacy programme.
Blazer was clear in his guilty plea that he had understood, from what Warner told him, that the $10m was, plainly, a bribe for their votes. He had given the US authorities a narrative of the money trail, which was set out in the indictment. Now, years after the Trinidad fallout in 2011, it finally provided an explanation for the $750,000 paid to Blazer which Warner had complained so publicly about: Blazer was saying that was his share of the South Africa bribe.
Blazer’s account was that when Warner told him the South African government and bid committee ‘were prepared to arrange for the government of South Africa to pay $10m to the CFU to “support the African diaspora”’, he was clear that it was ‘in exchange for the agreement of Warner, Blazer and co-conspirator #16 [an unidentified Conmebol member of the Fifa executive committee] to all vote for South Africa, rather than Morocco, to host the 2010 World Cup’.
The indictment accuses two unnamed ‘co-conspirators’ of having been involved: a ‘high-ranking official of Fifa’ and a high-ranking official of the South African FA and World Cup organising committee.
When Blazer pleaded guilty to the ten charges against him on that November morning in 2013, he included this bribe from South Africa as one of the crimes to which he was admitting.
‘Beginning in or around 2004 and continuing through 2011, I and others on the Fifa executive committee agreed to accept bribes in conjunction with the selection of South Africa as the host nation for the 2010 World Cup,’ he recited to Judge Dearie in the Brooklyn courthouse. That was included with Blazer’s admissions of being paid bribes and kickbacks when selling the rights to the Concacaf Gold Cups to Traffic in his guilty plea to count 1: the racketeering conspiracy.
Blazer was clear and had made an admission of criminal guilt that the money was a bribe for his vote, Warner’s, and a third member of the Fifa executive committee. There is a baffling contradiction in the evidence about the third person: in the indictment of Blazer personally, the US authorities allege it was the third Concacaf executive committee member. They were thereby accusing Isaac David Sasso Sasso, a businessman, president of the Costa Rica FA and Fifa executive committee member from 1990 to 2007, who died in 2011 aged eighty-five with no allegations of wrongdoing having been made against him. However, in the main indictment of Warner and the other twenty-six defendants, the authorities allege the third voter to have been involved in taking the bribes was an unnamed ‘co-conspirator #16’, described as a high-ranking official of Conmebol, not Concacaf. It seems rather a shame for Sasso Sasso’s family, to say the least, that the authorities have not moved to clarify this.
It was not made clear if the third voter is alleged to have taken a share in the money, but Blazer confessed that he did. He said that Warner had told him that he had accepted the offer of $10m from the South African bid team and government, and that he would give $1m of it to Blazer. This is the clearest admission ever of a Fifa executive committee member accepting a bribe for his vote on a World Cup host, although Warner has not admitted that it was.
Warner had during the bidding process already extracted a burdensome price from the South Africans to win his favour. Fixated on the prestige and status it would give him, Warner lobbied relentlessly for Nelson Mandela himself, the global embodiment of humanity, truth and reconciliation, to come to Trinidad to meet him personally. It might have been thought that Jack Warner could make up his mind about the objective merits of the rival countries bidding to host the World Cup without needing a personal visit from Mandela. But Jordaan and the South African bidders were so keen this time to secure the hosting of the World Cup, after being pipped by the German bid for 2006, that Madiba was persuaded to make the long, arduous journey to Warner’s Caribbean island. He was eighty-five, frail, his health faltering, and he never made a journey this exhausting again. In its denial that the $10m it subsequently agreed should be paid to Warner was a bribe, the South African FA said:
‘Our world icon, the late former state president, Mr Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, made one of his last foreign trips on 29 April 2004 and visited Trinidad and Tobago to encourage the head of its football association to vote for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup. He undertook this 17 hour trip because of his deep desire to fulfil his dream of hosting the world’s biggest sporting event in our country.’
The involvement in the bid of Mandela, a universally admired and adored figure, and his personal entreaty to Jack Warner in Trinidad, have always been presented as sainted blessings of the bid, and the tournament as an indivisible part of his humanitarian gifts to his nation. On the small Gulfstream jet, that photograph of him was taken, a blanket over his lower body, face fixed in a grin, with Blazer and Mary Lynn Blanks posing for the camera.
To see the image of a man as distinguished as Mandela forced to abase himself this much, towards the end of his hard and exemplary life, before corrupt thieves like Blazer and Warner, to have Fifa locate its World Cup in South Africa, is repugnant now. The picture was top of the blog Blazer maintained–which was still up, years after his guilty plea–boasting about his life among kings and presidents, living the high life on Fifa. Written across the picture, above Madiba’s head, in big yellow letters, is the blog title: ‘Travel with Chuck Blazer and friends’.
Warner, a Trinidad and Tobago MP and government minister by then, was in the official party to meet Mandela straight off the plane. During the two-day trip, Mandela was carted to a dinner hosted by Warner–at the Dr João Havelange Centre of Excellence. This long journey at Warner’s insistence was always portrayed as the clincher for the three votes Warner controlled. The vote, on 15 May 2004, just two weeks after Mandela’s visit, was 14–10 in favour of South Africa over Morocco, so the three votes were, as Warner always knew to his advantage, crucial. It was hailed as the historic landmark to bring the great and dazzling World Cup to Africa, sealing South Africa’s journey from the constitutional racism of apartheid to liberation and modernity.
‘Madiba’s personal diplomacy paid off,’ the SAFA said, ‘when Fifa decided to grant this privilege to South Africa.’
Until the US Department of Justice alleged it was a $10m bribe based on Blazer’s criminal confession, it seems that few people even knew that an actual payment had been made relating to the rhetoric about an African diaspora legacy. In the five years since the 2010 World Cup, no legacy programme had been announced in the Caribbean, and there were no activities relating to it, according to the journalist vigorously covering and investigating Warner, and football on the small island, Lasana Liburd.
The grim payment trail, and some supporting documentation, were disclosed or leaked, in the frenzy after the allegation was made. Fifa had issued a denial that either Blatter nor Valcke had anything to do with it; they were not ‘involved in the initiation, approval and implementation of the… project’.
Within hours, a letter was leaked to the Press Association, whose correspondent, the sports news reporter Martyn Ziegler, immediately Tweeted it to the world. It showed that Valcke had been directly asked to implement the $10m payment to Warner by the South Africa FA. The letters released subsequently showed that in December 2007, three years after the vote, three before the World Cup itself, Jordaan had written to Valcke to initiate $10m for a ‘2010 Fifa World Cup Diaspora Legacy Programme’. Jordaan, in his capacity as chief executive of the World Cup organising committee, told Valcke that the South Africa government had committed to paying that money. He said that two government ministers had been involved, saying the money should be paid to the organising committee.
So Jordaan suggested to Valcke that, as the government was to make good the $10m, Fifa should deduct the money from the overall budget for the organising committee, and ‘deal directly with the Diaspora legacy support programme’.
The next leak was of correspondence before that, dated 19 September 2007, in which Valcke had referred to the South Africans’ $10m diaspora legacy programme being ‘specifically for the Caribbean countries’. On 7 December 2007, strangely, the very same day as the letter Jordaan had sent to him, Valcke wrote what appeared to be a chasing email to a South African government minister asking when he could make the transfer of $10m. In that email, Valcke said this had been discussed by Sepp Blatter and the president of South Africa:
‘This is based on a discussion between Fifa and the South African government and also between our president and HE President M’Beki [sic].’
Fifa, responding to that leak, insisted that Blatter was not involved in implementing the scheme, but was ‘simply referring to an update’ Mbeki had given Blatter.
By 4 March 2008, three months later, crucial detail had been added to the discussions. It came in a letter from Molefi Oliphant, then the president of SAFA and a vice president of the Confederation of African Football, to Valcke at Fifa in Zurich, confirming the arrangement. Now, however, the recipient of the money had become more specific: ‘SAFA requests that the Diaspora Legacy Programme be administered and implemented directly by the president of Concacaf [Jack Warner himself] who shall act as a fiduciary of the fund.’
How the idea of a development fund for the African diaspora had come to be directed into the control of Jack Warner, personally, as the ideal person to administer it, nobody has explained at the time of writing. After the letters emerged, Fifa released another statement, clarifying its first one, saying that although Valcke was indeed clearly involved in the correspondence about the $10m, he was not ‘initiating’ it, and the payment had been authorised by the chairman of the finance committee, the late Julio Grondona.
For so much money presumably intended to do good, transformative work in impoverished areas of the Caribbean, to which African people had been transported as slaves, and for so high a purpose as an African diaspora development programme, there appears to have been very little follow-up about what was actually done with the $10m. The indictment, giving Blazer’s account, alleges that no programme was ever going to be put in place and it was always simply a bribe from the South Africa government and bid, for Warner’s and the two other votes. It says that for some years after they voted, Blazer ‘periodically’ asked Warner about the $10m and chased up his promised $1m share. Blazer said that he was told that ‘the South Africans’ were for some time unable to arrange for the government to make the payment:
‘Arrangements were thereafter made with Fifa officials to instead have the $10m sent from Fifa [to the CFU],’ the indictment states, ‘using funds that would otherwise have gone from Fifa to South Africa to support the World Cup.’
Then, in early 2008, three payments totalling $10m–two of them in January, before that 4 March request from Oliphant to Valcke–were paid by Fifa to Bank of America accounts in New York which the indictment states were in the name of Concacaf and the CFU, ‘but controlled by the defendant Jack Warner, at Republic Bank in Trinidad and Tobago’.
The FBI had investigated what happened to this money which had landed in US bank accounts, and the indictment alleges that Warner ‘caused a substantial portion of the funds to be diverted for his personal use’. It sets out as examples $200,000 of an initial $616,000 from Fifa which Warner allegedly transferred to his own personal loan account, then more than $4m which he is accused of laundering via a middleman. This was a Trinidadian businessman, unnamed in the indictment but whom the US authorities state they have identified, and to a large supermarket chain and property company which this person owned.
‘During approximately the same period, funds equating to at least $1m were transferred from these same accounts into a bank account held in the name of Warner and a family member, at First Citizens Bank in Trinidad and Tobago,’ the indictment states.
Warner took his time to pay Blazer, who said he finally heard ‘from a high ranking Fifa official’ that Fifa had indeed paid Warner the $10m. Blazer then asked for it again, according to the indictment, but ultimately Warner only ever gave him $750,000 of the $1m promised. It is alleged that Warner told Blazer he would have to pay it in instalments because he had already spent the money. He eventually paid it in three instalments, which appeared to be eerily similar to the three payments to Blazer which Warner complained about in 2011.
The indictment alleges that the first was for $298,500, wired from a Trinidad bank account in the name of the CFU, on 19 December 2008, to one of Blazer’s accounts at a bank in the Cayman Islands. The next instalment of his bribe money was stated to be for $205,000, a cheque, which Blazer paid into his own account at Merrill Lynch in New York. The third payment involved another cheque, this time for $250,000, drawn on the account in the name of CFU at the Republic Bank in Trinidad and Tobago, being transported in and out of the US. It was physically delivered to Blazer by an intermediary, who flew over to JFK airport from Trinidad and then took it to Trump Tower to put it in Blazer’s hand, the indictment states. Then, a representative of a bank in the Bahamas, where Blazer had an account, flew over to New York to take it off Blazer, then flew back to the Bahamas and, on 3 May 2011, paid the cheque into Blazer’s account. The indictment claims that Warner sent Blazer an email in March 2011 to tell him the payment was coming. Blazer never received the final instalment, of just under $250,000, which he claimed was due for his share of the bribe. In his public complaint about Blazer in 2011, Warner had indeed said that Blazer was chasing him for another $250,000.
When this hideous allegation, confessed by Blazer, broke and shattered Sepp Blatter’s coronation week, SAFA issued a long denial. It included the sugary credit to Madiba, a reminder of the legacy for Africa and its diaspora which the bid had promised, describing this as a ‘noble effort to support football development’ and arguing that the $10m was paid in good faith to Warner who appeared ideal at the time to administer it.
‘We categorically deny that this was a bribe in return for a vote,’ the SAFA statement said, again praying Mandela in aid of its argument. ‘It belittles the hard work done by Madiba, Archbishop [Desmond] Tutu, the South African government and numerous others who sacrificed their time and money and family lives to make our country proud! It tarnishes their images in the most unscrupulous manner.’
SAFA referred to some other football development programmes, to justify including a diaspora legacy programme in its bid and having Fifa pay $10m to Warner, which SAFA accepted it did. However, nowhere did it say that any actual work had been done on this legacy programme, and did not explain whether it had made any efforts with Warner to check on whether a programme had been set up. In fact, SAFA appears to acknowledge that the money had gone and that Warner and Blazer appeared to be the culprits:
‘That the money may have been siphoned off by individuals after it was donated does not make the donor complicit or a co-conspirator,’ it said.
Jordaan himself, who became the mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay in Port Elizabeth, has repeatedly denied that the $10m he asked Valcke to pay was a bribe to Warner, and also argued it was a betrayal of Madiba’s work to suggest it.
In March 2016, Fifa threw a rock through the window of its previous denials. The embattled governing body, which had been in the hands of its US lawyers for months, seeking to maintain ‘victim’ status and avoid being condemned as a RICO, sued all the charged defendants itself. In the list were its former long-serving executive committee barons and allies of Blatter: Warner, Teixeira, Leoz, Blazer and the others in Concacaf and Conmebol alleged to have taken bribes. In effect, Fifa was now saying it believed everything in the indictments to be true, and that this criminal activity had indeed damaged Fifa, which made a ‘victim statement’.
In that, it set out its own history as the basis for its hurt: that Fifa was founded in 1904, had 209 member associations, ‘giving it greater global reach and diversity than even the United Nations’. Fifa stated its constitutional purpose and that it had been a ‘global force for good’, proclaiming its achievements–the World Cup, ‘tireless efforts’ to promote football; $550,000 a day going to development projects, the social initiatives and children playing the game in troubled regions.
‘Fifa is the driving force behind football throughout the world, ensuring that it is on solid ground everywhere,’ was the claim.
The lawsuit argued that the ‘brazen corruption of the defendants’ had tarnished the Fifa ‘brand’, obscured its role as a ‘positive global organisation’ and also caused it financial damage which it was claiming from the defendants.
Within that startling legal position taken by Fifa against men it had paid, pampered and indulged for decades, it included Warner and Blazer’s $10m bribe from South Africa, adopting the allegations in the indictment.
‘It is now apparent that multiple members of Fifa’s executive committee abused their positions and sold their votes on multiple occasions,’ Fifa itself stated, remarkably, having overseen these votes and never itself found any bribes to have been paid.
Fifa claimed that Warner had developed ‘strong, illicit ties to the South African bid committee’, having received the briefcase with $10,000 in cash, as alleged in the indictment, which his son Daryan, acting as ‘his father’s bagman’, picked up in a Paris hotel and took back to his dad in Trinidad. Then, to secure Warner’s vote for the 2010 tournament, Fifa now claimed:
‘The South Africans offered a more attractive bribe of $10m in exchange for Warner’s, Blazer’s and a third executive committee member’s votes. Warner and his co-conspirators lied to Fifa about the nature of the payment, disguising it as support for the benefit of the “African diaspora” in the Caribbean region, when in reality it was a bribe. They breached the fundamental duties they owed to Fifa, CFU and Concacaf, and stole $10m.’
Fifa specifically sued Warner, Blazer and their–unnamed–co-conspirators for the $10m it now said was ‘theft’, money they ‘funnelled as bribes for their personal use’.
Claiming that they also took their salaries and allowances on false pretences because they did not give ‘honest service’ in return, Fifa claimed repayment from all the defendants, $28m in total. In Blazer’s case, from all his years at Fifa, the claims was $5.3m; from Warner, Fifa wanted $4.4m on top of the $10m. Oddly, there was no mention of suing to reclaim the money from the Dr João Havelange Centre of Excellence, and the new regime at Concacaf did not respond to my question about whether they are seeking to repossess it from Warner. In its claim, Fifa was also suing the defendants for the damage to its reputation and its legal costs, which will not be cheap.
The day after this claim was issued, the South African sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, criticised as ‘despicable’ Fifa’s adoption of the bribe allegation and implication of the South African bid. He maintained that SAFA had asked for a $10m fund for a diaspora legacy programme in the Caribbean, and that if Warner took the money, that was ‘frowned upon’. He argued that the Fifa lawsuit was not aimed at the South African government, but only at the defendants in the US indictment. And Mbalula mounted a platform of indignation again, at the accusation being made:
‘The South African government maintains its position that the African Diaspora Legacy Programme was a legitimate programme of the South African government,’ he said. ‘We will not apologise for our progressive stance to the African diaspora for including the diaspora in the pride and honour of hosting the Fifa World Cup. To infer or insinuate anything else, including to diminish such an important part of the continent’s history as an elaborate ruse to issue a bribe, is despicable.’
I have a number for Jack Warner, and an email address he responds to–Trinidad is a small place, and he is surprisingly accessible. When I called him, I introduced myself, said I was writing a book about the events at Fifa, and wanted to hear his perspective. He replied:
‘I have nothing to say about Fifa, now or ever. You can write the book, without my support.’
I decided to email him, invite him to give his perspective on all the issues in which he has been accused or implicated of wrongdoing. It was a long list: the issues raised by the Concacaf integrity committee report which found he had perpetrated a $26m fraud to own the Dr João Havelange Centre of Excellence; the allegations in the indictment, particularly the alleged $10m bribe to vote South Africa for the 2010 World Cup; whether there ever was a diaspora programme; the brown envelopes of cash with bin Hammam in the Hyatt Regency; bin Hammam paying him $1.2m after that, which some people have alleged was so that Warner would not contest the charges and give evidence; his alleged ticket scams over the years, the current status of the Dr João Havelange Centre of Excellence; several other allegations of improper conduct against him; and to clarify his current stance: whether he is denying the claims in the indictment and contesting extradition, and, if so, on what grounds. In September 2015 the Fifa ethics committee, using new powers investing it with the authority to proceed against people even after they have resigned, banned him from football for life. It cited, without giving details, that he had been involved in ‘schemes involving the offer, acceptance and receipt of undisclosed and illegal payments’. The ethics committee said this related to its investigation into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups investigated by Garcia, not for the alleged South Africa bribe.
Warner replied quite promptly to my email, saying:
Dear Mr Conn
It is clear that our interests at present veer along divergent paths and what seeks to attract your attention is quite irrelevant to me.
Please be advised accordingly,
Regards,
I replied, trying once more, telling him I was still very interested in hearing his thoughts and perspective, including about his experiences at Fifa in general. He responded promptly again:
‘While I am impressed with your insistence [sic] please be advised that I do not share your interests and have no desire to assist you or the Fifa or anyone else in this matter.’
The US law enforcement authorities also want to talk to him about these issues, for which they have issued major criminal charges, including this most terrible allegation of all. The accusation is that he abused the history and legacy of African slavery, pretending he would implement a programme of good works for the descendants of those whose lives were stolen, and instead he stole the money himself. At the time of writing, he has very skilled and expensive lawyers arguing against his extradition. So he may never be forced to ‘assist’, and face the question about what he did with $10m for a South Africa World Cup 2010 Africa Diaspora Programme, paid to him after Nelson Mandela, at eighty-five, was made to fly seventeen hours over the ocean, to beg for his support.