CONFIDENTIAL!
Minutes of the Meeting of the FIFA Executive Committee, 22 and 23 March 2007
They say that Football is the People’s Game - but the People are not permitted to know how FIFA controls their Game. Here is a rare insight into what Sepp Blatter and his friends say behind closed doors in FIFA House.
This is a very confidential document. But it is not the complete picture. There never is one. Blatter is Chief Editor of the minutes of Executive Committee meetings. He changes what he wants. Disputes and angry exchanges don’t happen in his football family.
So this document was sanitised before it was circulated to members of the Executive Committee. A few of them confide in me that they are unhappy about this – but they don’t know what to do.
An audio record is made but it can be crudely edited.
This happened to the recording of the ExCo meeting of December 7, 2005. Several seconds were deleted from the tape, the written record was altered and this false evidence was used to try and swing a court case in FIFA’s favour.
Anyway ...
Here's the Minutes that Blatter doesn't want you to read!
(PDF File is 1.6MB)
For now ... let’s focus on a few interesting points. There’s a lot to be investigated – so please keep scrolling down.
Page 4: Blatter calls for a minute’s silence in memory of recently deceased players and officials. He mentions Blagoje Vidinic – but doesn’t reveal that Vidinic was a close aide of Horst Dassler and a crucial fixer in levering Havelange, Blatter and Jack Warner into power at FIFA
Vidinic was in Frankfurt in 1974 paying cash for votes to elect Joao Havelange President of FIFA. Sixteen years later, in April 1990, Vidinic was with Havelange in Guatemala City at the CONCACAF Extraordinary Congress to make sure Jack Warner was imposed as President of CONCACAF. Since then Warner has delivered all the region’s votes for Havelange and then Blatter.
A few days after the vote that put him in power Warner faxed to Blatter:
'Let me place on record my sincere thanks to you and the FIFA for your support and understanding over the last few months. I shall always remain eternally grateful and permanently indebted to you and I do wish to give the assurance that in all of our deliberations and actions loyalty to you, to our President, Dr Havelange and to the organisation of FIFA itself, shall always be paramount.'
Before he died Horst Dassler told Vidinic the names of the officials who demanded bribes in return for giving him marketing contracts.
Once Blatter took control of FIFA in 1998 he snubbed Vidinic who had helped smooth his path to power. Shortly before his death Vidinic, who kept documents and lists, talked about the dark side of his work and I’ll write about that another time.
The final paragraph on page 4, turning to page 5, has Blatter giving a rosy picture of the catastrophic MasterCard Court case that FIFA lost in December 2006. There’s no mention of the court judgement that “FIFA lied repeatedly” or that they may have to pay court costs exceeding US$5 million and are losing US$2 million in sponsorship revenue every month.
Blatter tells the ExCo that he has appealed this judgement – which probably won’t be resolved until after he is safely re-elected. When he attempted to get the case moved to the safe hands of a Zurich arbitration panel, Judge Preske in New York stated, ‘FIFA’s latest actions demonstrate that it still does not govern itself by its slogan “Fair Play.”’
Blatter claims – if he can be believed - that both VISA and MasterCard want to talk with FIFA. But FIFA’s behaviour has been appalling and its losses so significant he has to beg his colleagues for their ‘support and understanding.’
It’s unlikely that many members of the committee have read the full trial transcript and the comment on page 446 by MasterCard lawyer Martin Hyman:
‘Disraeli once said there were three kinds of lies; lies, darn lies and statistics. We have learned from the FIFA marketing group that there are more,’ said Mr Hyman.
‘We have learned about the six degrees of prevarication, white lies, commercial lies, bluffs, pure lies, straight untruths and perjury. Mr Valcke (FIFA Marketing Director) even lied when testifying about his lies. But in FIFA’s world that’s perfectly OK because, as Mr Schuster (FIFA Marketing official) suggested, business people should expect to be lied to.’
There’s a long chapter in the new paperback edition of FOUL! revealing more of the astonishing disclosures in a Manhattan Court.
On page 5 Blatter reveals that his investigators are trying to discover how transparencyinsport obtains so many confidential FIFA documents.
Blatter covers up Jack Warner’s ticket rackets and instead wastes FIFA money trying to discover who is giving me Warner’s documents. Here’s some news for President Blatter; you won’t find out. Experienced ex-detectives and IT specialists have shown me how to cover my electronic tracks. My sources, inside and outside FIFA are safe.
Blatter should be posting these documents on the Web, not me. Transparencyinsport has achieved more than he ever has to make FIFA transparent. And far more than he wants.
The next important story is at the bottom of page 8, turning to page 9. Blatter made a big noise at FIFA’s Marrakesh congress in September 2005, setting up his “Task Force” to combat corruption in football.
It got him the good headlines he needed – “Blatter confronts football corruption” - and now, with nothing done or achieved, he merges it into a “Strategic Committee” – the same as closing it down. It’s only reporters and detectives who investigate corruption at FIFA.
In the middle of page 9 – at item 10.2 – is the stunning disclosure that not one of FIFA’s 207 affiliated national associations has any proposals for the meeting of football’s parliament at the Zurich congress at the end of May. Officials know that their organisation is racked by bribery and corruption – but they are content with their bundles of World Cup tickets and FIFA freebies.
Nobody is even asking - why have Swiss Fraud Squad detectives raided FIFA House? What reason was given on the warrant? Under which section of the Swiss criminal code? (It was section 158)
Item 15 – on page 14 – “Football for a Better World” sounds great. FIFA is going to divert a little of its vast financial resources to the developing world. Why? Blatter needs to keep his voters happy. He chose this to be the lead item of the press release issue (see below) after the meeting – hoping to divert attention from his scandals.
On page 15 we reach the report on Marketing and TV. General Secretary Urs Linsi introduces new temporary Directors of Marketing and of TV – without mentioning the MasterCard scandal that forced the sacking of their predecessors.
They appear to be confused. Mr van der Noll claims ‘all six top tier FIFA Partner slots for the 2007-2014 period have been filled.’
He hasn’t been looking at the Marketing page of fifa.com! There’s only five listed. That’s because the financial services slot is being contested through the New York courts by FIFA, MasterCard and VISA. At present there isn’t one - and there’s a lot more litigation and legal settlements to come.
But who cares? FIFA is suggesting that - even with Jack Warner getting his World Cup TV rights on the cheap - they’re still hoping to extract US$4.5 billion from broadcasters for the next two World Cups.
The final item on this page is hilarious. Blatter solemnly assures members that all contracts are receiving extra legal vetting “to minimise the risk of disputes.” The fact is that the MasterCard/VISA fiasco was caused by FIFA lying to sponsors, not because the contracts were flawed.
FIFA sources insist that Blatter is consulted about everything the Marketing department does and that since this crisis all the sponsors have reviewed their contracts to make sure FIFA can’t break them.
Nearly all of page 16 – item 17 – is FIFA officials and committee members congratulating themselves on how much money they are making and how wonderfully transparent they are (Try asking President Blatter how much he pays himself in salary, expenses, allowances and bonuses! And who pays his tax?)
The nuclear blast is buried at the foot of the page. Finance Director Markus Kattner casually mentions that “a relatively small result could be expected for 2007 due to the expenses budget which had already been stretched to its limit.”
This is the polite way of telling members that too much money is being spent on Sepp Blatter’s world tours, to flatter the officials who vote him into power and to get photos of him shaking hands with world leaders.
Not a word of this worrying financial problem was revealed by Blatter at his press conference or in his upbeat, happy press release.
One huge expense is Blatter’s determination to fly by expensive, chartered jets. Not using scheduled flights increases environmental damage. Blatter is doing his personal best to accelerate global warming.
It’s part of his delusions of grandeur – the Emperor of World Football cannot possible fly with ordinary humans on scheduled flights.
And . . . apart from the cost of these flights, Blatter pockets $500 a day untaxed allowances. As he usually spends at least half a year away from home – and frequently more – he is a very expensive president.
Viewers of my BBC Panorama programme about FIFA corruption saw him hire a Gulfstream to fly for 45 minutes from Zurich to Frankfurt in June 2006. President Blatter is developing a very large carbon footprint.
Back to the minutes ... Mr Markus Kattner knows better than most people how FIFA operates. He was a member of the McKinsey Management team led by President Blatter’s nephew Philippe, hired to reorganise FIFA.
Mr Kattner stayed behind and became Director of FIFA Finances. Now he negotiates with Philippe Blatter, new head of InFront, the Swiss company that owns all the television rights to the World Cup. Theirs is a cosy, lucrative little world.
As the agenda reached page 19 and item 19.9, ExCo members began to wake up and look at their watches - how much time was left before their flights out of Zurich? All that was remaining, conveniently placed near the close of the two-day meeting, was the biggest current scandal at FIFA – the Warner family ticket rackets.
In private they say what Blatter will not admit in public: the Warner family-owned Simpaul Travel company made at least Euros 754,375 ‘profits through the resale of 2006 FIFA World Cup tickets.’
That’s US$1,026,636. A million bucks! The Warners are the biggest ticket touts in the football world!
The Warners have repaid US$250,000 – oddly, this is the same amount Trinidad football – totally controlled by them – receives in its annual FIFA grant.
The throwaway statement that collecting the outstanding money will be left to FIFA’s administration removes the scandal from the agenda and signals that the Warners will never be forced to pay.
And as controller of 35 votes at FIFA’s congress – that can make or break Blatter – there is no chance Warner will ever be punished for his crimes against fans.
Now ... here’s the two page press release Blatter published after the meeting. There seems to be a lot missing. And see, on page 2, how Blatter won’t reveal the truth about ‘the situation regarding Simpaul Travel.’ The taboo word ‘profits’ has been suppressed.
Blatter is not prepared to admit that the Warner family-owned Simpaul company screwed fans for US$1 million.