Wednesday March 12, 2008: We barrel down the lakeside and up through the cow pastures and snowy peaks between Zurich and Zug. Today has to be Schmiergeld – kickbacks - day. We got a taste of Japanese cuisine last afternoon; today we expect to go global. We are itching for names.
We’ve got the Indictment; the tables in Section 12 list a dozen offshore bank accounts that got bunged around £9 million during the last 15 months of the ISL’s life. It’s getting taut in the court as Judge Siegwart reminds the Six, looking more sheepish by the minute, how they shipped the money out of Switzerland to secret accounts in Liechtenstein and the Caribbean. Then it was moved on to lucky bribe-takers. Bribery wasn’t illegal then in Switzerland (It is now). But Siegwart’s argument is that the Six knew the company was doomed and the money should have gone to pay overdue debts.
So why was it shipped out? Herr Malms clears his throat. At last, the pathetic admission that they weren’t the brightest dealmakers on the planet, never Masters of the Business Universe, no more than a grubby bunch of machine-greasers. Anybody with a bag of cash could have been a boss at ISL. It was a ‘regular part’ of ISL’s business he explained, to pay kickbacks.
‘I was told the company would not have existed if it had not made such payments,’ Malms said. He’d discovered the truth soon after joining when he wondered where the money was going. ‘I do not know who the final recipients were but I was always told they were well-known decision-makers in the world of sports politics.’
(Malms knows more - but 20 days more will pass before he punches the tickets of the two biggest names in the game.)
It was usual, he admitted, in the whole sports marketing and sports political business worldwide. ‘It was the style of the business. If we didn’t pay, we would have had to close our company.’ That’s what happens when you have to do business with the FIFA kleptocracy.
Absolutely, chipped in beancounter Schmid. ‘It is just like when you have to pay someone a salary. Otherwise they won't work for you. If we hadn't made the payments, the other parties wouldn't have signed the contracts.’
(They’ll confirm who the other parties were, in another 20 days. Of course some of us know already, but it helps to have these confirmations of corruption made in here and so we can report them, protected by court privilege.)
But, honestly, please believe me Malms told the court, he intended stopping the rot. That £9 million was to be the last of the kickbacks. He never did explain why he expected the shakedown artists to halt their demands on the company. But it had to stop, he explained, because ISL was planning a stock market floatation, and they wouldn’t be able to bury bribes in their books any longer.
Then he revealed that the techniques for clandestinely moving the wholesale bribe money offshore – exactly the way the drug dealers, corporate thieves and thuggish dictators hide their dirty money – were dreamed up by one of the most senior – and still very active – partners at their Zurich solicitors who we hacks at the back of the court know also represent FIFA.
This racket was then approved by their auditors KPMG who we hacks at the back remember represent FIFA as well. What a small world these rich men inhabit. And they had friends in high places. The scam was given the kiss of life by the Swiss federal tax authorities.
Those offshore accounts had some pretty names; Nunca, Sunbow, Taora and now . . . Sicuretta. ISL wired £3 million and Jean-Marie removed it in traditional suitcases of cash, sometimes more than £500,000 a time – and won’t say who he bunged. All he would ever admit, as the Zug investigators flourished the thumbscrews over the months, was that it was cash for ‘the acquisition of rights.’
In an off-hand comment to investigators, and quoted in the Indictment, a Liechtenstein lawyer Guido Renggli who managed the Sicuretta account and doled out the bundles of readies, remembered being taken to Paris in 1998 by Jean-Marie to meet the newly-elected FIFA president Blatter.
OK, said Judge Siegwart, I want to know who got the money? Five of the Six insisted they had no idea. Like us at the press tables they knew the names of all the top decision-makers in world sport – and there’s not that many of them – but they didn’t know who had taken their money. Hadn’t a clue.
The man who distributed the goodies, Jean-Marie Weber, is the fourth stooge in the line-up in front of us and Jean-Marie knows everything. He was once Horst Dassler’s assistant and took over delivering the bungs when Dassler died. His job description at ISL was ‘cultivating relationships’ and he carried his two black briefcases around the world, stuffed full of these private agreements to kickback.
For years Jean-Marie’s tall frame and bouffant silver hair has towered above every FIFA meeting and the congresses of other wealthy sports. Today he’s looking scrawny, his voice is reedy and his hair suddenly cut short, is he hoping to avoid the prison barber?
Judge Siegwart asks him, who got the money and Jean-Marie begins the mantra we hear repeated through the rest of the morning, ‘On the advice of my lawyer I have no statement to make. My lawyer will address these matters.’ At other times he says ‘these payments were confidential and I must respect that confidentiality.’
Siegwart’s getting testy. These clowns are taking the piss. He fixes on a modest kickback, only $250,000, the Indictment says it went to a Mr Abdul Muttaleb of Kuwait. When it was paid in 2000 he was Director General of the Olympic Council for Asia. And yes, ISL obtained a contract with the OCA. In 2004 the BBC’s Panorama programme caught Muttaleb discussing how bribes could be paid to his friends on the International Olympic Committee. End of the big earners for Abdul.
Why have you paid so much money to that person in Kuwait, demands the Judge. Here, we have to show our companies and tax officials documents for every meal we have with business partners – and you give away $250,000 without any notice, any documentation, any contract, any memo, any letter?
The certificated accountant Schmid re-states. ‘We wouldn’t get any receipt from those persons.’
Next for shaming is FIFA executive committee member Nicolas Leoz. The fact that he trousered $130,000 from ISL was leaked to a London newspaper in the autumn of 2006; damage limitation when this trial seemed imminent. It’s surprising that there’s no other evidence today of payments to Leoz. He’s been the president of CONMEBOL, the South American federation forever and if votes were being bought, his was a thirst that would need barrels of champagne. The Six have nothing useful to contribute about Leoz. The Judges’ scowls lengthen.
Siegwart’s had enough. He pulls a hand grenade from the files on his desk, flips the pin and rolls it across the courtroom floor.
When our ears stop ringing we realise what he’s said; he’s got evidence that in the previous decade they’d paid out – wait for it, hold tight – a stunning £60 million in bribes. That’s on top of the £9 million on the charge sheet. No wonder ISL dipped south, never to return.
Judge Siegwart tries yet again for names. Malms says he doesn’t know them - but that a handful of reporters do. And Yes! Jean-Francois Tanda from Zurich, Jens Weinreich from Berlin, Thomas Kistner from Munich and I grin at each other. But Jean-Marie doesn’t say. The others repeat their mantra, only Jean-Marie knows.
The hearing ended at 11.20. The lawyers will be back on March 31 to submit their arguments and verdicts are expected in three months. We went away to think about the wider implications of the evidence.
Back in 1995 the mighty IMG group promised FIFA they would top any offer from any company for World Cup television and marketing rights. Their starting price was $1 billion and there wasn’t a ceiling. They were given the bum’s rush and wrote angrily to Blatter, then FIFA general secretary, that ‘preferential treatment [is] being given to other parties such as ISL’ and that the bidding was merely ‘a cosmetic exercise.’
ISL got the rights.
After ISL went bust the liquidator found documents that pointed to some FIFA officials filling their boots. He agreed a deal with Jean-Marie, represented on this one occasion by the Zurich lawyer who most often represents Blatter to set up an account to repay a little over £1 million. The foreword to the agreement says, ‘Mr Weber wishes that the recipients of the money paid by ISL who are directly or indirectly involved in football business will not be asked to repay any further money.’
You scream, I scream, we all scream who were ‘the recipients?’ Bluntly – did Blatter take bribes or are his denials to be believed?
The Six disperse, much smaller men now. Their legal strategy has collapsed. Next time they attended the Zug court, they’d be wise to bring their toothbrushes. The confident line they’d borrowed from too many old movies, ‘Do yer worst copper, you’ve got nothing on me, you’ll have to me go’ had offended the judges. Only Malms seemed to have remembered that Carole and her chums had the power put them behind doors without keys for several Christmases.