Precisely six months had passed since Mohamed bin Hammam’s great triumph amid the snow fields of Zurich and his circumstances could not have been more changed. Everybody had wanted to be his friend in those months after Qatar’s improbable victory when he bestrode the football world like a colossus, jetting from handshake to handshake in the four corners of the earth as his whirlwind presidential campaign had gathered momentum.
And now this. Bin Hammam had never been a man to lounge around his home, but here he was in Doha, excluded from the theatre of intrigue and politics in Switzerland where he belonged. He should have been there at the FIFA congress challenging Sepp Blatter to a proper contest – instead of watching him being crowned unopposed on the television. It had been a nauseating spectacle. Now he was languishing in Qatar wondering how to fill his afternoon with the temperatures reaching over 40°C, as they had done fairly consistently since the beginning of May. It was, of course, a reminder to Bin Hammam that this was the time of year that the World Cup would be played. Despite his new lowered personal circumstances, he had to keep his eye on the main prize for the sake of his country.
Something had to be done about Jack Warner. His ‘only brother in football’ was an ally when times were good, but Warner was clearly out to save his own skin and his method of doing it was by flaying others. Bin Hammam had been furious when Warner had released the Jérôme Valcke email speculating that his countrymen had bought the right to host the World Cup. That had been unforgivable and no way to repay a friend. Now the whole of FIFA was trembling at the possibility that Warner might unleash the ‘tsunami’ of scandal he had threatened, whatever it might be.
There were plenty of skeletons lying beneath the FIFA hilltop and the man from Trinidad was someone who knew exactly where most of them were buried, having spent the last three decades grubbing around in the dirtiest corners of football administration. Warner had been close at hand throughout Bin Hammam’s World Cup campaign and was privy to many secrets – not least the payments into his own account from the billionaire’s slush funds. He had to be silenced. The best way to do that was to give him what he wanted, and Jack only ever wanted one thing. Money.
This one had to be a big payment. On 8 June, a week after Warner had threatened the tsunami, a message pinged on Najeeb Chirakal’s smartphone: ‘Could you please let Mr bin Hammam know that I am trying to contact him with an urgent message. I believe he has my number.’ It was from a kindly, bespectacled middle-aged woman called Joanne Mora, who acted as Warner’s assistant and described herself as the ‘chief administration officer’ in the football official’s group of private companies. It was clearly an important call. Mora had been up at 5am to send the email Chirakal.
The subject of the call to Bin Hammam was a $1.2 million payment to Warner from the Kemco slush fund. Within a couple of hours, Mora sent Chirakal the first of several emails that day which were to give details of how the cash should be paid. In order to disguise the payment, Mora asked for $412,000 to be paid into her own account, $432,000 into an account controlled by Warner’s son Daryl and a further $368,000 into a company called We Buy Houses Ltd, owned by the FIFA official. All three accounts were in the same branch of the First Citizens Bank in the northern fishing district of Tunapuna, Trinidad. Chirakal dutifully arranged for the money to be paid through Kemco in the following days.
Now that Jack was getting paid, any fractures in the relationship with his brother in Qatar were quickly plastered over. The two men were planning to fight the ethics committee’s decision to suspend them and they set about getting their stories straight over a string of calls and emails. FIFA had announced that there would be an independent investigation by the Freeh Group, a US company owned by the former FBI director Louis Freeh, into the bribery allegations, and both Bin Hammam and Warner were outraged. They were simply not prepared to deal with these American interlopers. FIFA’s internal problems should be kept inside the FIFA family. Wasn’t that what Blatter was always saying? Both Bin Hammam and Warner resolved to refuse to speak to Freeh and his sidekick Tim Flynn.
The contract had been a breakthrough for Freeh, who had been attempting to persuade FIFA to hire him as its ‘independent ombudsperson’ for some time. In an email back in February to Valcke and FIFA’s director of finance, Markus Kattner, he had set out his vision for the role he could play. ‘I believe that the time is ideal now for the President to announce a new, comprehensive plan to establish the strongest ethical and anti-corruption governance structure for FIFA,’ he wrote. And he, Louis, was just the man for the job. ‘One recommendation would be for him to appoint me as an independent “Ombudsperson” who would function as a public “clearing house” for corruption or ethical complaints alleged against FIFA and its associated officials. (As an option, this could also be established to be an investigative facility which would report its findings/recommendations directly to the President. However, the Ombudsperson role can be simply a “reporting channel” for the President).’
The benefits of such a scheme would be endless. ‘The costs associated with its operation (eg, a “hot line,” minimal staffing, administrative, etc.) are very minimal and, conversely, the “reputational” and PR benefits are very immense if rolled-out properly and personally endorsed by the senior leadership. We realise how busy you are but I am convinced that such an action, taken now (when the public media has quieted a bit), would be a “win-win” for the President and FIFA.’
Blatter had decided that the time had come to claim that ‘win-win’, now he wanted Bin Hammam and Warner buried, and so his officials had picked up the phone to Freeh and asked him to come and sort out the former presidential challenger and his friend in the Caribbean. Flynn was now tearing around the world on a bottomless expense account, visiting officials in the Bahamas, Zurich and New York, piecing together their accounts of what had happened in Port of Spain.
Dozens of football officials were prepared to speak to them and they collected a whole raft of new affidavits corroborating the original accounts by Fred Lunn, Sonia Bien-Aime and David Sabir about what had occurred in Trinidad. Some of the officials had handed over records showing they had deposited their $40,000 gift in bank accounts straight after the congress. Others had been given letters by the CFU confirming that they had been given the cash for football development to enable them to carry it through customs. One had kept the original brown envelope, matching the one in Lunn’s photograph, which he handed over. The investigators had even managed to recoup about $80,000 of the cash that had been disbursed. But for all this industry, every effort they made to speak to either of the accused men themselves was frustrated.
While Bin Hammam refused to co-operate, the companions who had been with him on the Port of Spain trip were happy to leap to his defence when they had their collars felt by Flynn. Manilal Fernando remained a loyal champion of Bin Hammam throughout his suspension. On 16 July, he emailed his friend to say he had been contacted by the investigators. ‘I would be happy to have a copy of your Statement for my personal guidance,’ he said. Later, he sent Bin Hammam the statement prepared by Worawi Makudi, who had also been on the trip. Among his many talents, Fernando was the proud owner of a law degree, and he offered his friend in Qatar unlimited free legal advice. At the end of June, he asked Bin Hammam to send over his entire file and urged him to take a strong stance because ‘the American lawyers will try to fix you.’
Back in Port of Spain, Mora was having trouble with the bank holding the accounts into which Bin Hammam had paid the $1.2 million for Warner. On 16 June she was forced to contact Chirakal again. ‘The funds have hit the all respective accounts,’ she wrote, ‘but the banks are all asking for a letter from you stating that the funds came from you and the purpose.’ She provided Chirakal with the wording for three letters to cover each of the payments. The first said: ‘This is to advise that monies in the amount of US $412,000.00 was wire transferred to Ms Joanne Mora by Khalid Electrical and Mechanical to offset expenses associated with meetings held in Trinidad and Tobago, Zurich, Switzerland and New York, USA of delegates and officers of the Caribbean. Such costs include but are not limited to airfare, accommodation, meeting logistics, interpretation equipment and services, etc.’ The other ‘Kemco letters’, again written on Mora’s computer, were along similar lines but mentioned legal costs for an ‘on-going matter’. Kemco’s general manager sent the letters back to Mora that day.
While Warner was waiting to collect the $1.2 million waiting in the bank, a short statement appeared on FIFA’s website on Monday 20 June which sent a shock through the global game. The president of CONCACAF had resigned all his positions in FIFA, ending his 29-year career as a football administrator. One of the game’s biggest and most controversial beasts had gone. Since Warner was no longer involved in FIFA, the investigators from the Freeh Group were deprived of any right to pry into his affairs. He would not have to answer any questions or submit his financial accounts, which would have shown his past payments from Bin Hammam.
FIFA’s statement accompanying his resignation left the world – and its own investigators – baffled. Warner was leaving while under investigation for bribery and yet Blatter showered him with praise. ‘Mr Warner is leaving FIFA by his own volition after nearly 30 years of service, having chosen to focus on his important work on behalf of the people and government of Trinidad and Tobago as a Cabinet Minister and as the Chairman of the United National Congress, the major party in his country’s coalition government,’ the FIFA press statement said. ‘The FIFA Executive Committee, the FIFA President and the FIFA management thank Mr Warner for his services to Caribbean, CONCACAF and international football over his many years devoted to football at both regional and international level, and wish him well for the future.’ And then world football’s governing body waved the magic wand and made all charges against Warner disappear. ‘As a consequence of Mr Warner’s self-determined resignation, all Ethics Committee procedures against him have been closed and the presumption of innocence is maintained.’
FIFA’s own in-house investigator Chris Eaton had been away from Zurich and was intrigued to learn of Warner’s resignation. He forwarded a Press Association report to his old friend Tim Flynn, who soon pinged back a reply.
‘That got out quickly,’ Flynn wrote. ‘It will be interesting to see what he has to say if he talks to us.’
‘He won’t talk to you mate – that’s why he resigned,’ Eaton scoffed. ‘He’s fighting for his life now – and I don’t care!’
‘I agree,’ said Flynn. ‘If he does it will all be self-serving.’
‘But he’s also taken out his evidence against BH [Bin Hammam] – so chances are he has had an inducement to resign,’ Eaton came back.
‘I think he may come to Zurich to talk to us but it will be interesting to see what the terms were. They wont [sic] give us the agreement,’ said Flynn. Eaton had been unaware of the negotiations with Warner, but his ears pricked up at the mention of an agreement.
‘I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of weeks . . . so if there has been a “pre-resignation” agreement, as there should have been, then good,’ he wrote. ‘And I would hope part of the condition of FIFA saying such things as: “Mr Warner is leaving FIFA by his own volition after nearly 30 years of service,” [is] that full and frank disclosure is required, because I don’t know how you (I mean, Louie and you guys) can write up this without inculpating Warner. So much then for his (temporary) presumption.’
‘I agree,’ said Flynn. ‘That will be an interesting dance that will take place later this week . . . Warner is trying to save his political life but I don’t see it unless he tries to put it all on Bin Hammam. Unless of course, they take over the questioning from us. I will keep you in the loop.’
The two men had got at least one thing right: Bin Hammam had indeed paid Warner a large inducement, but the $1.2 million was still sitting in a Trinidad bank while its officials assessed whether any money-laundering laws had been broken. They were still unhappy, despite receiving the letters Mora had requested from Kemco. She once again wrote to Chirakal: ‘Dear Najeeb, Please inform Mr bin Hammam . . . that all the funds have been or will be returned to source. No reasons were given.’ It was a problem that was to bedevil the attempted transfer of funds for a few more weeks.
Warner had to find a new way to receive the money. He suggested an alternative route: the cash could be paid as a single sum of $1.2 million into his company J&D International, which had an account in Salt Lake City, Utah. He told Bin Hammam he was getting desperate. ‘My dear brother,’ Warner wrote in an email. ‘We have a serious problem in paying all our legal bills since the local bank did not release the transfer but instead returned it to your bank. In the circumstances, can you be kind enough to have the full sum wired to the under-mentioned account for which I do thank you kindly. Time is of the essence.’ Later the same day, he sent Bin Hammam a $20,000 bill from his lawyer, with the subject: ‘Help’. However, the Salt Lake City transfer failed too, and Warner’s staff turned to the Cayman Islands as a way to transfer the cash from Qatar. When Chirakal wrote to say he believed the money had finally been paid, Warner’s delighted response read: ‘Allah is great ! ! !’
But the joy was misplaced: that transfer too eventually bounced back. ‘Just got a rude shock from our Bankers that your Bank has again returned the funds,’ Mohammed Farid, Kemco’s financial controller, wrote to Mora on 7 July. Mora responded: ‘We are working feverishly on our end to address this distressing situation,’ and quickly came back with a suggestion. The money should be sent ‘in parts rather than the entire amount, within at least one week of each other (500K, 212K, 500K) [or] be sent from another account, possibly one that is more directly related to football and the reason for sending same could be payment for advisory/professional services rendered.’ Three days later, Warner chimed in with an email directly to Bin Hammam. ‘I’m financially desperate re the legal bills,’ he pleaded. The following day, on 14 July, another failed attempt was made to pay the money – this time into an account held by Warner in New York.
A false invoice for ‘professional services provided over the period 2005-2010’ was then concocted as a fig leaf for the corrupt payment, and dated 15 December 2010. This time, the attempt to pay the cash appeared to have been successful. Warner had gone for good, and his tsunami had subsided far from the Doha shore in the clear blue waters of the Caribbean Sea.
As Jack was being taken care of, there was more good news for the Qatar bid as it sought to fight off accusations that it had bought the World Cup. It came curiously from Phaedra Al-Majid, the whistleblower who had alleged that she had witnessed the African executive committee members taking bribes from her bid team colleagues at the Luanda congress. On 1 July, she signed a witness statement completely retracting her allegations and publicly apologising to her former employees, and the three men she alleged had taken bribes: Issa Hayatou, Jacques Anouma and Amos Adamu. The barely believable U-turn by Al-Majid was a major coup for Qatar which instantly claimed she had wiped clean a major stain on its reputation. Although, as it happened, Majid’s mea culpa moment had all been orchestrated by the Qatar 2022 supreme committee.
Blatter had already dismissed the allegations by the whistleblower on the eve of his re-election, claiming that she had not come forward with any evidence and promising that the Qatar World Cup would therefore remain untouched. In fact, Al-Majid had been negotiating with Eaton, through a London lawyer, to give her full account to FIFA under conditions that it maintained her anonymity and protected her from a legal action. Eaton had contacted The Sunday Times after Majid’s allegations had been included in the newspaper’s submission to Parliament the previous month, to see if its journalists would be willing to let him talk to the whistleblower. The newspaper sought permission from Al-Majid and provided her with a lawyer to make sure that any interview with FIFA did not expose her to any risk. She was a single mother with two children and she was anxious about being thrown to the wolves. She had every right to be nervous.
Al-Majid’s lawyer had first contacted Eaton on 20 May and began discussing terms under which she could give evidence. Two days later a FIFA security colleague emailed Eaton confidentially about ways they might be able to discredit the whistleblower. He suggested that the investigator should: ‘Ask the Qatar contact for her name and any background,’ and ‘We should research her background too. It may be there is something in it to use.’ FIFA had proposed a meeting with Al-Majid on 25 May and she was still considering her position when, out of the blue, Blatter announced to the world’s media that FIFA hadn’t ‘received any evidence whatsoever’ from the whistleblower and the matter was closed.
Shortly after Blatter’s surprise pronouncement, Nasser Al-Khater, the communications chief of the Qatar supreme committee, had contacted his old colleague at her home in Washington and told her he knew she was the whistleblower. Al-Majid would later say Qatar had threatened to invoke a non-disclosure clause in her employment agreement to sue her for $1 million if she didn’t sign a statement retracting all her claims. This would have ruined her financially and put her children’s future in jeopardy. She buckled. Al-Khater accompanied Al-Majid to an attorney’s office in Washington on 1 July and sat next to her as she swore an affidavit confessing to her ‘lies’. The Qatar supreme committee invited the BBC to do some filming of their preparations for 2022 and then offered an exclusive interview with Al-Majid by phone when they arrived in Doha. ‘There was never anything suspicious or any wrongdoing on Qatar’s part,’ she told BBC’s Newsnight.44
As for Chris Eaton, within a few months he was on his way to live and work permanently in Qatar. In January 2012 he announced to FIFA that he was taking his entire security team to work for the Doha-based International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) – the multi-million-dollar contract he had been lining up in his talks with the Qataris. Eaton sent his new boss, Mohammed Hanzab, a briefing note setting out a detailed timeline of the intelligence his team had built up over the past two years at FIFA and took with him a detailed knowledge of every in-house FIFA investigation before and after the World Cup bid.
Eaton penned himself a note titled ‘Reasons for leaving’ as he prepared to go to Doha. The top item read: ‘It’s more salary, responsibility (all, not limited integrity issues) and greater potential for success.’ He also wrote an excoriating intelligence ‘brief’ on FIFA as he departed for his new job in Qatar in which he branded 11 of the 24 men on the executive committee ‘untrustworthy’ or ‘completely untrustworthy’ and was scathing of the men at the very top. The president, he wrote, was ‘the epitome of a political leader. Compromises on all for ambition. No evidence of personal compromise. Greedy and manipulative. Maintains relationships and loyalty mostly through largesse. Manages FIFA like it’s a small club of colleagues. Ruthless.’ As for Jérôme Valcke, the secretary general: ‘Has a difficult post under the grace of the President . . . Had visions of replacing Blatter. Not now. Is charmingly arrogant and carless [sic] of integrity, but not directly complicit. Ruthless.’
The departure was greeted with amazement by Valcke, who had first brought Eaton into FIFA. ‘Dear Chris, It takes me as a surprise! Why?’ Valcke asked. When Eaton’s departure leaked to the press, the secretary general finally lost his rag with the investigator. ‘Again we are the stupid people having to react. I have asked to keep this information until we can communicate positively and again and again we are fucked. Nice. So do whatever you want. I am going home,’ he fumed.
While Bin Hammam awaited the outcome of the Freeh Group investigation in Doha, there was a final little favour to attend to for one of the FIFA voters. Franz Beckenbauer was bringing a group of German shipping magnates to Qatar to discuss trade deals with the Gulf state in June 2011, and Bin Hammam would be their host. Der Kaiser had retired from the FIFA executive committee in the spring after the World Cup vote and, since April, he had been working as a consultant for Erck Rickmers, the owner of the German shipping firm ER Capital Holdings. His contacts in Qatar from his days in world football were part of the big attraction. The firm owns companies which transport oil and gas on the high seas and, thanks to their new star hire, they were coming to Doha to discuss ‘a possible cooperation . . . with Qatari investment funds and investment opportunities in the maritime sector’.45
Beckenbauer went back a long way with Rickmers. They were so close that his wife, Heidi, had been chosen to christen one of the firm’s new supertankers – named ER Bayern after the footballer’s old club – in a ceremony in Korea in August 2010. The shipping boss had followed up with a donation of $250,000 to Beckenbauer’s charitable foundation. Now he was accompanying the football legend to Doha, along with three other executives from his firm. They were joined by Marcus Hoefl, the sports agent who had arranged Bin Hammam’s mysterious rendezvous with Beckenbauer in London on the eve of his withdrawal from the presidential race the month before. Najeeb Chirakal booked the group’s flights and put them up in fine style in the Four Seasons Hotel.
The delegation arrived in Doha on 28 June, enjoyed Bin Hammam’s hospitality and attended talks with the dignitaries in charge of Qatar’s sovereign wealth funds. No deals were signed, but the ability to arrange such high-level access for his new employer was a big feather in Beckenbauer’s cap – and it was all thanks to Bin Hammam. Rickmers wrote personally to the Qatari at his home address to thank him for all he had done a month after the group returned to Germany. That would be the last favour he would do for one of FIFA’s World Cup voters.
On 1 July, Bin Hammam finally received a letter from FIFA enclosing the full report put together by Louis Freeh’s team of investigators and informing him that the final hearing of the ethics committee would take place on 22 July. He hurriedly opened the attached document and began to scan through the pages. ‘There is substantial credible evidence that cash was offered to and accepted by attendees of the CFU meeting held in Trinidad and Tobago on May 10-11, 2011,’ the report said. ‘This evidence comes in the form of witness statements, documents, and more than $80,000 worth of payments received at the conference that three football associations are willing to disgorge.’
It went on: ‘There is no direct evidence linking Mr Bin Hammam to the offer or payment of money to the attendees of the Trinidad and Tobago meeting. However, there is compelling circumstantial evidence, including statements attributed to Mr Warner, to suggest that the money did originate with Mr Bin Hammam and was distributed by Mr Warner’s subordinates as a means of demonstrating Mr Warner’s largesse. Indeed, the funds were offered to attendees shortly after Mr Bin Hammam’s campaign speech.’
The Freeh report noted that, although Warner’s resignation letter had promised ‘cooperation with the FIFA Ethics Committee in the resolution of the ongoing investigations into alleged irregularities pertaining to the recent visit of Mohamed bin Hammam to Port of Spain,’ he had subsequently told reporters he would ‘die first’ before speaking to the investigators. Their numerous attempts to speak with him had been unsuccessful, and he had finally confirmed his refusal to cooperate in writing on 26 June, accusing them of being part ‘of a trans-Atlantic cabal’ which was trying to destroy him.
The report noted that Bin Hammam had also ‘refused to speak with Investigative Counsel working for the FIFA Ethics Committee’. He had also refused to provide his bank statements for review and claimed that telephone records the investigators had demanded did not exist.
The report made grim reading, but here was a small glimmer of hope for Bin Hammam. It said in plain black ink that there wasn’t actually any evidence that he had anything to do with the cash envelopes. Almost all the Caribbean officials recalled Warner telling them to collect their gifts upstairs, and later saying they came from him, but no one could remember anything linking Bin Hammam to the payments beyond what Warner had said. Worawi Makudi, Hany Abu Rida, Manilal Fernando and Michelle Chai had all spoken to the investigators to confirm they had not seen any evidence of money being transported into Port of Spain on Bin Hammam’s private jet, or distributed in the hotel. Surely no court would convict on that basis? Netzle was already hard at work using all his forensic legal brainpower to tear the Freeh report to shreds.
A week after Bin Hammam received his copy of the document, on 7 July, he was appalled to see it extensively quoted in a flurry of press reports. There had been a leak. ‘FIFA find evidence of Jack Warner and Mohamed bin Hammam corruption,’ the headline in the Daily Telegraph blared. That day, Najeeb Chirakal forwarded the entire file to Hassan Al-Thawadi.
The secretary general of the Qatar 2022 supreme committee was keeping a close watch on Bin Hammam’s case. He found himself in a terrible bind. Al-Thawadi revered this wise elder who had taken the bid committee’s young leaders under his wing and taught them so much about the world of football politics. They knew how much they owed him. Everyone had expected Bin Hammam to play a huge part in the preparations for the World Cup he had worked so hard to bring to Doha, and Al-Thawadi had been looking forward to working alongside his mentor to bring the bid’s grand plans to fruition over the next decade.
Only ten days before the scandal had broken in the Caribbean, he had been busily negotiating with Elie and Mona Yahchouchi, the partners in Bin Hammam’s new IT company, which was in line for a multi-million-dollar contract to deliver digital services to the tournament in 2022. He had done all he could to get Bin Hammam’s presidential push off to a flying start, too – bankrolling a private jet from the supreme committee’s central funds and engaging Netzle to advise on the campaign. He had grown close to Bin Hammam, but not so close that he couldn’t see the full horror of the situation when he read the Freeh report.
Al-Thawadi was the chief custodian of the Qatar World Cup project, and it was his job to keep the poison of scandal away from the Emir’s ‘big cake’. Much as it pained him, he knew that Bin Hammam had become toxic and he needed to be kept at arm’s length now more than ever. That IT deal would have to be junked, for a start. And Al-Thawadi thought it would be best if Bin Hammam retired from world football altogether. After Bin Hammam had pulled out of the presidential race to protect the World Cup bid, the Emir had generously granted him a long enough leash to allow him to fight to clear his name – as long as Qatar 2022 didn’t get dragged into the mess. Al-Thawadi hoped very much that he would succeed, but when he read the Freeh report, he didn’t feel hopeful. It was better for everyone if the wounded old timer accepted that his days in football administration were over, so Qatar could look to the future.
The secretary general of the 2022 supreme committee gave an interview to the Guardian from his office high up in Doha’s Olympic tower at the start of July to try to polish away the dirt accumulating around his bid. Al-Thawadi was an accomplished media performer: engaging, assured and articulate. Perhaps sometimes he could be a touch abrasive, but today he was showing the reporter his soft underbelly, confiding that he had broken down and cried when Qatar won. ‘So much good can come out of this World Cup,’ he insisted. ‘Breaking down prejudices between the Arab world and the rest of the world, bringing people together, a profound legacy.’ The corruption allegations whirling around Qatar’s bid were just a figment of the imagination, fuelled by anti-Arab prejudice, he said. ‘I’m asking the world to look at us rationally. There is no evidence behind any of these claims, not a sliver . . . Even if we had wanted to do anything improper, which we did not, we could not risk it because if it ever came out, the reputation of our whole country would be in tatters, the absolute opposite to what we are trying to achieve.’
Then, Al-Thawadi took his first tentative steps towards disowning his mentor. Bin Hammam had not, he said, been integral to Qatar’s World Cup bid, and they should not be tarnished by the scandal which had brought him down. ‘We never went and gave him instructions. There is no connection to what is happening to him now, and what happened with us,’ he said. He couldn’t bring himself to jettison the man completely – not yet. ‘Also remember: he too is innocent until proven guilty,’ Al-Thawadi said. ‘And in our nature, as Arabs, as Qataris, we are not just going to abandon people for the sake of others in the world saying we should.’ Within a few short months, he would find himself with no option but to do just that.
On 17 July, Al-Thawadi was taking one last look over a statement that had been drafted for Bin Hammam by the Qatar 2022 team, for the greater good of the World Cup dream. It was five days before the accused man was due to appear one last time before the ethics committee. Satisfied that the right tone had been struck between protestations of innocence and resignation to the inevitable, he sent the statement to Najeeb Chirakal, with an instruction to ‘Please forward the below statement to Mr Bin Hammam’.
It read: ‘On the 22nd of this month, I will travel to Zurich for my hearing in front of the FIFA Ethics Committee. It is no secret that the last two months have been disappointing. My hopes of a fair trial have been jeopardised by continuous leaks of information and public comment from certain people involved in the process.
‘In spite of this, my years serving football and FIFA give me confidence that the Ethics Committee will give me the fair hearing that I deserve, uninfluenced by political agendas or other interests. I trust that the committee will base their decision on factual evidence and come to a reasoned decision. I will fight my case to the end. If this means taking the matter to CAS or the Swiss Federal Courts – I am prepared. I will not rest until I clear my name.’
Then came the punch. ‘Continuing the battle to prove my innocence and clearing my name will eventually allow me to retire from all football-related affairs. It is disappointing to leave a game behind that I truly love and am committed to. The majority of my life has been dedicated to serving the game and in particular the Asian Football Confederation. I intend to conclude my career on a high and am convinced I will be fully exonerated from the charges made against me.’
Bin Hammam read the statement, and his jaw set defiantly. The Emir had promised him he would be allowed to clear his name before he was made to retire from the game. He knew it was inevitable at the end of all this, but announcing it now looked all too much like conceding defeat. He was a realist and he could see that his chances of surviving the ethics committee hearing unscathed were almost nil, with all the odds stacked against him, but he didn’t want to admit it was all over. Not yet.
Two days later in Kuala Lumpur, Jenny Be was chatting to Victoria Shanti, a secretary in the AFC president’s office. They hadn’t seen their boss, whom they called ‘P’, for ages. He had been in Doha since his suspension – and they were sick with worry. But on 19 July, Be had news for her colleague.
‘I spoke to boss on the weekend,’ she said.
‘Oh . . . how is he?’ Shanti was eager to know.
‘He is worried coz no matter what, they will pin it to him,’ Be replied.
‘Yeah, I thought so too,’ Shanti said sadly. ‘But the Emir not pressuring P to leave football?’
‘No, this time, they backed off, coz he is fighting for his name,’ Be explained. ‘In their culture that is more important than life and death.’
‘I see. But they might reopen the bid,’ Shanti worried.
‘No, Blatter gave his word.’
‘Yeah right. I don’t believe a word he says.’
‘It is not that smart to go against a country’s Emir, and one of the richest men at that,’ Be reminded Shanti.
‘Yes, money is everything,’ she responded. ‘Even Blatter knows that.’
The next day, Bin Hammam released an altogether more defiant version of the statement Al-Thawadi had sent him on his website. Some parts of the secretary general’s draft had survived. Bin Hammam had assented to saying that: ‘My years serving football and FIFA lead me to think, and presume, that at the very least the ethics committee will give me the fair hearing that I deserve, uninfluenced by political agendas or other interests.’ But much of the statement struck a more strident tone, and all mention of retirement had been excised.
The evidence against him was ‘weak and unsubstantiated’, the allegations were ‘flimsy and will not stand up to scrutiny in any court of law’. Bin Hammam was gloomy about his prospects – ‘I am not confident that the hearing will be conducted in the manner any of us would like . . . So, none of us should be completely surprised if a guilty verdict is returned’ – but he vowed to ‘travel a long and hard road to clear my name of the stain of this politically motivated affair’.
Bin Hammam chose not to go the hearing on 22 July – he had been booked into the Baur au Lac, but had cancelled his trip at the last minute. Instead, he was represented by Netzle and a formidable team of lawyers from Zurich, London and Washington. Eugene Gulland, his lead US counsel, arrived at FIFA headquarters under gunmetal skies sporting large round orange-rimmed spectacles under his helmet of iron-grey hair. Bin Hammam had some of the finest legal minds in the world on his team, and they gave Damaseb’s panel a run for their money. The first day of the hearing lasted 13 hours, running on till 10pm, and reconvened at 9am the following day. But it was no good. The ethics men were convinced that the Qatari presidential contender had been the source of the $1 million that had been handed out in cash in Port of Spain. At the end of the second day, the ethics judge emerged before a crowded press room and announced: ‘Bin Hammam is hereby banned from taking part in any kind of football-related activity at national and international level for life.’
Gulland was quick to shoot out a statement. ‘Mr Bin Hammam rejects the findings of the FIFA ethics committee hearing and maintains his innocence,’ it said. ‘He will continue to fight his case through the legal routes that are open to him. The FIFA ethics committee has apparently based its decision upon so-called “circumstantial” evidence, which our case has clearly demonstrated was bogus and founded on lies told by a senior FIFA official.’ The next step was to take the case to the FIFA appeals committee, and the team got to work preparing their submissions right away.
Bin Hammam was desolate, but had known this was coming ever since his shock suspension the day after his deal with Blatter. ‘I was expecting it actually,’ he said glumly in an interview by phone from Doha. ‘The ban for life, that shows how much these people are angry, how much they are full of revenge.’ Asked if he meant revenge for standing against Blatter, he replied: ‘Exactly. There is nothing else.’ That evening, he sat for many hours brooding over what had come to pass. Riffling through some old papers, he happened upon a letter which brought the old days flooding back – the days when he had basked in the golden light of the president’s gratitude and brotherly friendship. He read it and raged.
The next morning, the letter appeared on his website in a posting headed: ‘The Reward.’ It was the message Blatter had sent him back in June 2008, to mark his tenth anniversary as FIFA president. ‘Without you, dear Mohamed,’ he had written, ‘none of this would ever have been possible.’ It was an acknowledgement of all Bin Hammam had done to pave his path to the presidency with slabs of Gulf gold. Under the letter published on his website, Bin Hammam had written one line. ‘This is only the battle, not the war,’ it said.
In Kuala Lumpur, Bin Hammam’s empire at the AFC was crumbling. Zhang Jilong had taken over as acting president when he was suspended, and the Chinese official had got his feet under the table with what some considered indecent haste. Manilal Fernando had railed against seeing his friend so quickly supplanted. When Jilong had called an emergency meeting of the AFC to set the confederation’s new course just a week after Bin Hammam’s suspension, Fernando snapped. He sent a round-robin email calling for a freeze on any changes to AFC activities till its true leader was back at the helm. ‘We must all stand behind our President Mr Mohamed bin Hammam Al Abdulla who has done so much in reforming and improving the AFC,’ he said. ‘We do not need any acting revolutions, what we need is stability and strength. The President I knew in Mr Hammam is an honest man, sincere in his beliefs, perhaps arrogant sometimes but never vicious and has been a good friend to me, to Football and therefore, we should stand united with him. There is no need to create any fuss or have meetings regarding this. Let him seek legal relief.’
There was no longer any hope of holding back the tide. Jilong had reacted to Bin Hammam’s life ban by vowing to wash away corruption in Asian football, and the Qatari’s enemies in the AFC were quick to capitalise on his ruin. ‘It is the best news for Asian football and FIFA,’ Peter Velappan, the confederation’s former secretary general crowed. ‘I have worked with bin Hammam. He totally polarised the Asian football family.’ He went on: ‘It is a fair decision. Justice is done. There is no better alternative. Now the whole world will know how Qatar won the hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup.’
Suddenly, the loyal cabal of aides inside the AFC were feeling very exposed. In the days after the ban, Jenny Be orchestrated a frenzied effort to shred all the evidence from the three years in which Bin Hammam had waged his World Cup campaign and then his presidential bid. Victoria Shanti was her main accomplice.
‘Vic, I need you to take all P’s correspondence (misc ones, i.e. via emails) except for letters and start shredding them,’ Be wrote to the secretary in mid-July.
‘Oh,’ Shanti said, crestfallen. ‘So soon.’
‘Start from now,’ Be urged. ‘There are three years of filing to be shredded . . . also, please do it quietly.’
‘So only official letters that he replied, don’t shred?’ asked Shanti.
‘Yeah.’
‘But all others such as emails and those from Peter Hargitay, shred?’
‘Yes.’ The shredding went on for days.
‘Do I shred every email sent to P directly?’ Shanti later asked.
‘Yeah. Just from 2008 onwards. No need before.’
‘There is an email from Moscow for P to consider a Russian for position on the AFC. Shred?’
‘Yes,’ said Be.
‘For P’s personal file,’ Shanti asked, ‘should I just keep it aside first or need to shred most of it?’
‘Personal file contains what?’ asked Be.
‘Mostly from 2004 to 2007 . . . correspondences . . . invoices.’
‘Keep that,’ said Be. Back then, there had been nothing to hide. ‘Only from 2008 to shred,’ she told Shanti.
‘The list of nominees from tech com from Hassan with P selecting them, should I shred?’
‘Yes,’ came the inevitable reply. ‘Shred anything that you feel is sensitive . . . or could be used to tarnish him.’
By the end of the month, Bin Hammam’s loyal aides were being forced out of the door. Jenny Be was marched out on 26 July. She wrote hastily to Michelle Chai before she went.
‘They have come to collect my laptop and access card . . . I deleted all my emails and files except those in the server (official AFC business). Have you received your letter yet?’
‘Not yet la,’ said Chai. ‘Of course delete all la. That’s normal.’
‘Don’t leave anything easy for them. Let them work it out for themselves. Hehhehehee.’
‘Hahahahahah,’ Chai wrote back.
‘Have some fun, life is too short,’ Be told her friend. ‘If you don’t get your letter today then you have more time and can come help me carry my boxes.’
‘Aiya . . . more time for what? Hahahahahaa.’ Those were the last messages the pair would ever exchange as colleagues.
Chai and the AFC’s finance director Amelia Gan were sacked soon after. Two days after her departure, Be wrote on Facebook: ‘The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune. I am proud to walk out of AFC having worked with a great man and true leader.’ Two weeks later, she was still ruminating over the terrible fate that had befallen her beloved president. ‘Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury,’ she wrote. ‘So true,’ Shanti commented underneath.
FIFA rejected Bin Hammam’s appeal on 16 September. A month later, a tape was passed to the Daily Telegraph in London. It had been recorded on 11 May, and showed Warner telling the CFU delegates in Port of Spain that the cash gifts had come from their Qatari visitor. Bin Hammam’s legal team was now preparing for his next appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and this latest leak gave his reputation yet another battering he could do without. Bin Hammam fumed. This was all part of Blatter’s conspiracy to bury him for good, he was certain of it.
The man who had brought the World Cup to Doha was feeling increasingly isolated at home. By now, Hassan Al-Thawadi was at pains to disown his former mentor in public. At the start of October, he told the Leaders in Football conference at Stamford Bridge that Qatar 2022 had nothing to do with Bin Hammam and did not condone his appeal. ‘Mohamed bin Hammam is his own man,’ he said. ‘He and Qatar 2022 are completely independent and separate. The appeal is his decision and his steps. We have to ride it out as patiently as having to ride out the whistleblower allegations and others.’ Perhaps Al-Thawadi had forgotten the statement he had written for Bin Hammam back in July, declaring his intention to fight his appeal all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport if he couldn’t clear his name before the ethics committee. Such disavowals were a very far cry from the happy days when the bid leaders had described Bin Hammam as their ‘biggest asset’. How far he had fallen since then.
Meanwhile, back in Zurich, Blatter was busily implementing his electoral promise to set up an independent governance committee to lead the reform of FIFA. On 30 November, it was announced that he had appointed Mark Pieth, a professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Basel, to lead the new body. If Qatar’s World Cup delivery team had cause for concern when they first heard the news, they needn’t have worried. Blatter was no fool. It was soon announced that Pieth’s panel would be looking to the future; he would ‘not be supervising investigations into the past’.
Pieth showed he was the man for the job at his first FIFA news conference, saying: ‘I don’t care to rake up all that muck. I think I can be much more use looking into the future.’ The law professor conducted a quick review of FIFA’s practices and published a report in the spring which said its reaction to past scandals had been ‘insufficient and clearly unconvincing’. He believed he had the remedy. The organisation should split its ethics committee into two chambers, one to investigate allegations and another to adjudicate them. Blatter sensed an opportunity. He hailed the idea as ‘historic’ and vowed to implement Pieth’s suggestion forthwith.
Bin Hammam’s growing team of lawyers had submitted his appeal to CAS, and they were feeling confident. They remained convinced that the charges would not stick in a court that was not controlled by FIFA. The tape of Jack Warner claiming the cash had come from Bin Hammam didn’t prove anything against their client. The man from Trinidad was hardly renowned for his honesty and who knows what scam he might have been trying to pull off.
By February 2012, it was time for FIFA’s own lawyers to respond to the appeal. They filed a 99-page submission to the Swiss court, which was never meant to be seen by outside eyes. It was a potentially incendiary document. Contrary to Al-Thawadi’s claims that Bin Hammam had no part in the country’s 2022 campaign, FIFA’s own lawyers had noted: ‘He played an important role in Qatar securing the 2022 World Cup.’ They also highlighted the ‘striking similarity’ between the allegations against Bin Hammam and those against the Qatar bid which had surfaced in the House of Commons.
The submission said the messages Fred Lunn sent to Austin Sealey as the allegations about Qatari World Cup bribes broke on CNN were evidence that he believed the cash he had just been offered had come from Bin Hammam. Citing the ‘SMS exchanges between Mr Lunn and Mr Sealey on 10 May,’ FIFA’s lawyers noted: ‘The breaking story on CNN was about Qatari bribery in football, and they plainly believed that the payment was made by Mr Bin Hammam. There can be no doubt that the very striking similarity was being made by Mr Lunn . . . between these bribery allegations on CNN and what had just happened to him only moments earlier in the CFU boardroom.’
FIFA’s submission quoted extensively from the video recording of Warner claiming Bin Hammam had been the source of the cash, which had been leaked in October, and contained a section headed: ‘If Mr Bin Hammam was not the source then who else was?’ The lawyers argued: ‘It is self-evident that no other body or person had any motive to provide the gifts. Still less did anyone else have the motive to do it at Mr Bin Hammam’s Special Meeting.’ Bin Hammam’s lawyers scoffed when they read FIFA’s submission. It was laughable to expect a court to convict a man with no hard evidence just because no other culprit had been identified. They were confident of victory.
Zhang Jilong was watching events unfolding closely from the AFC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. He had been acting head of the confederation ever since Bin Hammam’s suspension, and the spectre of the former president’s return if he overturned his ban was distinctly unappealing. The AFC had already turned a corner under Jilong, and the vast majority of staff who had not been part of Bin Hammam’s trusted cabal found the interim regime a breath of fresh air. The fact was, however carefully the Qatari’s loyal aides had tried to cover up for their departed boss, Jilong knew there were bombs under the carpet in Kuala Lumpur. So the AFC had quietly commissioned its own investigation into the activities of its former president as he prepared to make his appeal to CAS. The auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers had arrived in force in February and were trawling through the sundry accounts Bin Hammam had used to make so many payments to his friends in world football.
The CAS hearing went ahead behind closed doors on 18 and 19 April in Lausanne. Bin Hammam did not attend, but once again sent his team of lawyers in to make his case. At the end of the hearing, Eugene Gulland issued a confident statement. This had been ‘Mr Bin Hammam’s first chance to answer charges against him in front of a court that is not controlled by FIFA’. The US lawyer was hopeful for a better outcome for his client.
Bin Hammam would have to wait for three months for the judgment, which was due on 19 July. Two days before it was handed down, he was hit side-on by an unexpected broadside from his old fiefdom. The Asian Football Confederation had announced his suspension. The PwC auditors had handed Jilong an excoriating report earlier that week, flagging up Bin Hammam’s ‘highly unusual’ use of the sundry debtors’ accounts at the AFC.
‘Our review indicates that it was common belief that this account was for Mr Bin Hammam personally and that all funds flowing through it were his personal monies,’ the auditors noted. ‘We question why Mr Bin Hammam would conduct his personal financial transactions through the AFC’s bank accounts when the documents we have seen indicate that he already has several personal bank accounts in various countries.’ The auditors had also found that ‘payments have been made, apparently in Mr Hammam’s personal capacity, to a number of AFC member associations and associated individuals . . . Significant payments (totalling $250,000) have also been made to Mr Jack Warner for which no reason has been provided.’
In reality, what PWC had uncovered was just the tip of the iceberg, but it was more than enough to sink an already listing ship. By happy coincidence for FIFA, the same day as Bin Hammam’s AFC suspension was announced, it had just unveiled the twin heads of its new ethics chamber, the former US prosecutor Michael Garcia as the investigatory chief and the German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert as the adjudicator. The PwC report from the AFC was the first item in their in-tray. It was time to bury the menace of the man from Qatar for good.
When the Court of Arbitration for Sport finally overturned the life ban imposed on Bin Hammam by FIFA’s committee on 19 July, the joy of hard-fought victory was somewhat muted. CAS said there was ‘insufficient evidence’ against him, so it ‘upheld Mr Bin Hammam’s appeal, annulled the decision rendered by the FIFA Appeal Committee and lifted the life ban imposed’. But the panel said the decision was not ‘an affirmative finding of innocence’ because, although there was ‘insufficient evidence’, it was after all ‘more likely than not that Mr Bin Hammam was the source of the monies’. They feared that his conduct, ‘in collaboration with and most likely induced by Mr Warner, may not have complied with the highest ethical standards that should govern the world of football and other sports’.
Bin Hammam was weary. ‘My wish now is just to quit and retire,’ he told the BBC afterwards. ‘I’ve served football for forty-two years – this last year I have seen a very ugly face of the sport and of football.’ He said he had ‘one mission’ and that was ‘to clear my name and then I say goodbye’. Almost exactly a year after Al-Thawadi had drafted a statement to that effect, Bin Hammam had finally accepted it was time to go. But first, he wanted to purge the stain that had now been placed on his reputation by his traitorous successor at the AFC.
A week later, on their first day in their new jobs, FIFA’s new ethics double-act Garcia and Eckert announced that Bin Hammam was to be provisionally suspended while the new investigator sought further evidence of his role in the Port of Spain scandal and probed the new allegations from the AFC. Eckert handed down his reasoned decision for the suspension in August, citing several prima facie breaches of the code of ethics identified by Garcia. He noted that the PwC report listed payments ‘out of the AFC sundry debtors’ account . . . controlled by Mr Bin Hammam to delegates of the Confederation Africaine de Football . . . and a payment made to Mr Jack Warner . . . in the amount of USD 250,000’.
Garcia had also advised that the report was ‘of relevance to the recently closed proceedings before the Court of Arbitration for Sport’ because ‘contrary to what Mr Bin Hammam had stated in the course of the respective proceedings . . . it results from the PwC report that Mr Bin Hammam had more than only one single bank account at his personal disposal.’ With the new suspension in place, Garcia had the chance to get his teeth into his first big case.
Bin Hammam was disconsolate. To be shut out again a week after being vindicated by CAS was too cruel a torment for an already badly beaten man. He wrote a letter to the member associations he had once ruled over in Asia, saying that the payments he had made had come out of his own bank accounts and were driven by a desire to help those in need. His letter cited five people from Bangladesh, Nepal and Kyrgyzstan whom he said he had helped, including two who had since died of cancer, one who had open-heart surgery, another for tuition fees for a FIFA programme, and the family of a 16-year-old from Nepal who died while playing football.
‘Let me declare that as a human being with the personal means to help and coming from a culture and society where this is seen as a duty, I am proud of these accusations, and I welcome them,’ he wrote. This was, he said, ‘yet another attempt by Zurich through the infinite tools and power of FIFA to diminish and insult Asia’s name by attacking me directly following the annulment of my previous FIFA ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport’.
A second appeal to CAS, this time to overturn the temporary ban, failed in September. And now Garcia and the investigators at the AFC were pulling Bin Hammam’s world apart piece by piece. News reached him that Amelia Gan, his former AFC finance director, had come under investigation by the Malaysian police over the theft of a financial document relating to a payment he had received. The AFC had informed police that the document was missing, and Gan’s husband Kong Lee Toong was arrested and charged with theft. Bin Hammam’s AFC trio had all taken refuge in the Gulf since they had been forced out of their old jobs in Kuala Lumpur: Gan and Jenny Be were both now employed by the Qatar Stars League, headed by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Thani, while Michelle Chai was director of club licensing for the professional league in the United Arab Emirates. Bin Hammam hated to see them dragged into this awful mess.
He was relieved when Malaysian prosecutors eventually dropped the charges against Lee Toong, without explaining their reasons, but things got worse at the start of October, when FIFA announced that Najeeb Chirakal had been banned from football. The unswervingly faithful aide had refused to co-operate with Garcia in any way when the investigator demanded information and documents about his master. Chirakal was ‘banned by the FIFA Ethics Committee from taking part in all football-related activity, at any level, due to his lack of collaboration with the ongoing investigation proceedings opened against Mohamed bin Hammam’, the official statement read. ‘This failure to cooperate constitutes a breach of the FIFA Code of Ethics. The ban is effective immediately and will last for two months or until Chirakal cooperates with these proceedings as requested, whichever is earlier.’ Bin Hammam’s right-hand man never buckled under the pressure, and so his ban was never lifted.
Then, on 12 November, a new storm broke over Qatar’s World Cup bid. The Sunday Times had obtained documents proving that the Al-Thawadi brothers had offered the son of Amos Adamu $1 million to host a dinner. All parties claimed the payment had fallen through, but the newspaper’s damning documents were sent to FIFA headquarters and passed to Garcia. It was the last thing Qatar, or Bin Hammam, needed. After the latest scandal broke, the Emir pulled the plug on any further attempts to clear Bin Hammam’s name. Sheikh Hamad had told him it was time to give in. Qatar couldn’t fight on so many fronts. The battle had to come to an end, and he didn’t want to hear any more from Bin Hammam on the subject of world football.
Michael Garcia submitted his final report to Eckert on 6 December. He had not found a scrap of extra evidence implicating Bin Hammam in the Port of Spain bribery scandal beyond that which had already been rejected by CAS, and so the case of the mysterious brown envelopes that had dashed his presidential hopes had been closed. But, now, FIFA was armed to the teeth with documents from the AFC which were enough to annihilate him. The Emir had made his wishes clear, and so before FIFA had a chance to ban him for life again, Bin Hammam quietly resigned on 15 December 2012. But FIFA was not taking any chances. This time, they were going to kill him off for good.
Two days after his resignation, world football’s governing body released a statement on its website. ‘In view of the fact that under the new FIFA Code of Ethics, the FIFA Ethics Committee remains competent to render a decision even if a person resigns, the Adjudicatory Chamber decided to ban Mohamed bin Hammam from all football-related activity for life,’ it said.
‘This life ban is based on the final report of Michael J. Garcia, Chairman of the Investigatory Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee. That report showed repeated violations of Article 19 (Conflict of Interest) of the FIFA Code of Ethics, edition 2012, of Mohamed bin Hammam during his terms as AFC President and as member of the FIFA Executive Committee in the years 2008 to 2011, which justified a life-long ban from all football related activity.’
And then, for the avoidance of any doubt, the statement made it clear he was never coming back. ‘Mr Mohamed bin Hammam . . . will never be active in organised football again.’