Show Them the Money! Report Say FIFA Corruption Can't be Stopped

Another World Cup – this one in Russia, which allowed disgraced top officials to attend – is over but with the cheering done, a report warns the Beautiful Game will continue to be The Corrupt Game and the leaders of the sport’s governing body, FIFA, will keep enriching themselves.

“After more than a century of scandals and a broad array of Potemkin-like reform maneuvers carefully packaged in pleasant press releases, it is clear that, absent accountability, FIFA will continue to operate as it has, seeking maximum personal profit for those at the top of football,” wrote Bruce W. Bean, a law professor at the Michigan State University-School of Law, said to The Crime Report.

In a report published in The Palgrave Handbook on the Economics of Manipulation in Sport, Bean essentially saw no chance that FIFA will clean up its act after a series of scandals brought down former President Sepp Blatter, who was banned from attending games but allowed to go to the World Cup.

Bean’s report pooh-poohs FIFA’s tries to eliminate corruption, which has gone on even in the aftermath of Blatter’s ouster with continued reports of shenanigans.

It’s because of money. Soccer brings in almost 40 percent of the $80 billion in annual revenues from all sports worldwide and FIFA alone said it earned $4.8 billion for the four-year cycle ending with the 2014 Rio World Cup, with a profit of $2.6 billion.

FIFA had kept secret what it paid its top officials but the President now receives $3.9 million and the General-Secretary is paid $2.2 million, wealth that Bean said gave the “the impunity of a sovereign, rogue nation,” Bean wrote.

So powerful is FIFA that it made Brazil lift its ban on selling alcohol at matches during the 2014 Cup games in that country and Bean said its worldwide presence makes prosecuting FIFA executives so difficult although it was a United States probe of corrupt officials tied to American representatives that shook up the game and brought down Blatter. 

Officials in Switzerland, where FIFA is located – along with the equally-tarred International Olympic Committee (IOC) – won’t cooperate in prosecuting for corruption, he wrote, claiming they don’t have jurisdiction in other countries to go after the body’s representatives there, leading to Switzerland being called the “Nirvana for Sports Criminals.”

FIFA set up a committee, IGC, allegedly aimed at stopping corruption, although that could end the money train for officials and paid the members $5000 a day for their deliberations.

“Overall, the answers by FIFA regarding the handling of alleged misconduct were not fully satisfactory to the IGC,” the report, cited by Bean, said. “Based on the discussion of specific examples, FIFA has—in the opinion of the IGC—shown a lack of proactive and systematic follow-up on allegations.”

Half of the 22 FIFA Executive Committee members who voted in 2010 to choose Russia as the site of the 2018 World Cup, have been accused of corruption related to the process.

Switzerland, home to at least 65 international sports organizations, should apply its own rules of corporate governance to the association, amending them as necessary to exert jurisdiction over FIFA’s worldwide activities, wrote Bean. 

“The football world deserves an honest FIFA,” he wrote. “Switzerland must pioneer the way to bring accountability to so-called not-for-profit entities.”