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By Nick Harris
20 October 2010
Two members of Fifa’s Executive Committee, Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Tahiti’s Reynald Temarii, have been suspended today following alleged deals to sell their 2018 and 2022 Word Cup hosting votes, as exposed by the Sunday Times last weekend.
Four other Fifa officials who were implicated in the ST reports – Slim Aloulou, Ismael Bhamjee, Amadou Diakite and Ahongalu Fusimalohi – have also been provisionally suspended from all football activity, as have the ExCo pair.
Fifa announced this after a meeting today of its ethics committee, chaired by Switzerland’s Claudio Sulser. Fifa will now investigate the circumstances leading to the suspensions, and presumably, related matters surrounding alleged voting arrangements between bidding nations and parties seeking to influence the bidding process. The full scope of any inquiry is not yet clear but Fifa expect some results sometime in November.
Present at a press conference this evening to announce the suspensions – a press conference (view footage in full here) that began two hours later than advertised, without explanation for the delay – were Jerome Valcke, Fifa’s secretary general, Nicolas Maingot, Fifa’s director of communications, and Sulser.
Valcke says the vote to decide the destinations for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups should still go ahead as planned on 2 December, as things stand. Valcke said the Sunday Times had provided more material to the ethics committee than is already in the public domain, and the committee agreed not to divulge its content for now.
This suggests there is a strong possibility the paper will publish more revelations this weekend.
There are four bid groups for the 2018 World Cup: (in alphabetical order) England, Netherlands-Belgium jointly, Portugal-Spain jointly, and Russia.
There are five bidders vying for the right to stage the 2022 tournament: Australia, Japan, Qatar, South Korea and the USA.
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A Fifa statement released this evening includes the following passage:
FIFA opened proceedings against the two Executive Committee members on 18 October 2010 and requested the Ethics Committee to conduct an independent, in-depth investigation into the matter. The Ethics Committee will meet again in mid-November 2010 in order to take a final decision on the matter after gathering more information and evidence on the six cases.
“The decision to provisionally suspend these officials is fully justified and should not be put in question. The evidence that has been presented to us today has led us to take this provisional measure, as we considered that the conditions were definitely met to take this decision and we deem that it is crucial to protect the integrity of the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process. We are determined to have zero tolerance for any breach of the Code of Ethics,” said the chairman of the Ethics Committee, Claudio Sulser.
Finally, and again at the request of FIFA, the Ethics Committee decided to open an investigation into alleged agreements between member associations and their Bid Committees in relation to the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup™ bidding process, something which would also be a violation of the Bid Registration document and the Code of Ethics. A decision on this case will also be taken by the Ethics Committee at its meeting in mid-November, following a thorough investigation.
Statement ends
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Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter, took the stage at the press conference and appeared upset that there had been questions suggesting Fifa might be associated with corruption.
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