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Peter’s is bigger than mine – or yours
By Andrew Jennings
(Scheduled for October 2009 – Never published)
Seven years ago, when cell phones with cameras were not so commonplace, Peter Hargitay took me for a let's-get-to-know-each-other lunch at a swish joint in London's Mayfair. The waiters drooled over him, Peter called me ‘Dear fellow’ and flattered me that I was ‘a senior writer.’
Midway through the main course Peter produced his phone. Suddenly it was in my face, in my space, rudely, controlling, close-up, right up my nose, click-flash.
Oh dear, I thought, I've put up with his bragging, I'm bored by him saying ‘fuck’ a lot, trying to sound like a comic-strip tough reporter but now he's given himself away. After four decades in this reporting game you develop shit detectors. The klaxons were honking in my head: I was facing clinical evidence of delusional ‘mine-is-bigger-than-yours’ disorder.
Welcome to Peter Hargitay's odd world, currently funded by Australia’s taxpayers.
Football Federation Australia, whose World Cup bid has been gifted $45 million of your money, has hired Hargitay, believing he is what he says he is - a ‘strategic advisor’ and ‘crisis manager.’ FFA chief executive Ben Buckley says, ‘We are very fortunate to have him.’ What is he paid? Ben won’t say.
Peter imposed himself on me as Sepp Blatter's ‘special’ advisor. Why would Blatter need one? I could guess - Blatter was waiting for that pre-dawn knock on his door.
DEBTS AND BRIBERY
The ISL company that was so long awarded FIFA's multi-billion dollar marketing contracts had dissolved in debts and bribery allegations in 2001, the previous year. A company liquidator was digging out damning lists of kickbacks to football officials and the cops were showing interest. Things could only get worse.
The knock did come, but later in November 2005 when the fraud squad raided Blatter’s office in FIFA HQ. That criminal investigation continues. Then in 2008 I sat in a Swiss court and heard Herr Blatter's friend of three decades Jean-Marie Weber - aka The Bagman - admit paying USD100 million in bribes to sports officials.
Peter was crisis-managing then: I was told he'd rung around the London sports news reporters advising them, ‘Don't waste your time going to that court case. There'll be nothing new.’ They believed Peter, didn't bother to make the trip - and missed one of the great scoops in sports corruption history.
Where did Peter perfect his trade? A little digging delivered the information that Peter bought his first PR company in the 1980s from batty Swiss astrologer Michael St Clair. Now, Peter announced, he would only work for ‘high net worth individuals’ (Hello Frank).
After our pre-Christmas lunch, Peter emailed me to ‘rest a bit, surrounded by your family.’ Before we proceed, consider this: I had spent the previous two years pumping out stories in a London multi-million circulation newspaper, linking the words ‘Blatter’ and ‘corruption.’ I was the enemy.
But now Sepp was forgiving. His new ‘senior advisor’ was assembling an ‘international media advisory group - you and some six more authors of importance,’ Peter told me. Now I would be important to Sepp, to FIFA - and to Peter. I was being invited into their club!
AMERICA'S MOST WANTED
I dug further and unearthed that Peter had promoted the caring image of the Union Carbide company after the appalling industrial disaster in Bhopal, India, that cost thousands of lives.
Then Peter went to crisis manage for America's most wanted, mega-tax-evader Marc Rich and apartheid sanctions buster, living in Switzerland. Peter's task was to engage with journalists to buff Rich's image. Fortune magazine noted, ‘Sometimes he looked over the interviewers' questions in advance, then helped edit the interview.’
Our romance was barely a one nighter. Wine and dine didn’t last. The true nature of the beast, attack dog, soon revealed itself.
I emailed some questions to Peter and back came a terrifying threat: He would report me to a Big Suit in the Swiss Foreign Affairs Ministry! And a Swiss newspaper proprietor I'd never heard of! And a lawyer in Jamaica! And Sepp Blatter! And lastly, ‘my family.’ The crisis manager seemed to have lost his plot.
Later Peter emailed me that I am ‘deeply dishonest’, ‘have selective ethics’ and am ‘disgusting and repelling.’ (sic)