The US has a legally privileged aristocracy: the "officers of the court," who include everyone with a special relationship to the judicial system, including the police--which partly explains why more of them wander around shooting people than is ideal. Near the top of this upper crust are federal prosecutors, who tend to hunt splashy quarry to further their careers. It's definitely not always a good thing, but in this and many other cases they pick deserving targets. What they usually do is get their way. They must want Blatter,, and will offer tempting pleas to do so. Plea deals, on principal, are astonishingly wrong. If you can't get the testimony you want for money, it's ridiculous that you can coerce it with an offer of freedom. But you can, all prosecutors do, and it makes for a remarkable success rate for the prosecutors, especially in high profile, high stakes games of "Gotcha" like this one. There's a lot of danger and abuse of power involved in the system. On the other hand, it has the very useful ability to convict those able to bribe, wiggle and wrangle their way out of other prosecutions.
FIFA 16 is adding women's national teams to the game. I wonder if FIFA 17 is going to add prison teams?
I really don't know whether to laugh or cry! http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32914907 This man has no honour, knows no shame. He is human effluent, pure and simple.
One consequence of the US order to the Swiss police, on 27 May 2015, that it arrest and extradite seven FIFA officials for alleged corruption, could be that a vote to kick Israel out of world football for its racism towards Palestinians will now not take place. The vote was due to be held by the FIFA annual congress on 29 May and expected to win majority support. America saving Israel again.
I'm not sure what the solution is here. If you have a one member one vote democracy in FIFA then the inevitable consequence is that some big operator from a very poor country will have a major say in how $Bs will be distributed. That's only going to end one way whatever the organisation and whatever the structure because even if the initial occupant of the post is a saint there is enough incentive to get organised crime involved.
Now the UK's SFO joins in on the act. "actively assessing material in its possession" relating to corruption at FIFA.
Wow, suddenly all of the authorities have worked out that FIFA are corrupt. I wonder what sparked this epiphany? I'm going to suggest that there's money involved, somewhere down the line.
Yes. Remarkable observation and detection work by the redoubtable serious farce office. Holmes himself would have been proud to have been able to reach such a conclusion!
If you work in Africa and or the middle and far east you become aware that backhanders small or Major tax free non scripted commission on deals are such a norm that criminal charges are extremely rare Guess where Blatters voting stronghold is
FIFA tested their electronic voting system to make sure everything's working properly before the main event. Are Germany were the current World Cup holders? 5% of the delegates got it wrong. With reference to the early points about Israel and the vote on their future in the organisation, it appears that the vote's been dropped. The head of the Palestinian FA has asked for it to be removed, suggesting that he did so at the urging of his colleagues. Given that 75% of the delegates would've been required to back the vote for it to pass, it's unlikely to have succeeded.
In the case of Africa, there's two reasons for this: i.) He really, really wanted to give Africa a World Cup - when South Africa failed in their bid to host the 2006 tournament, the solution was to state that only African nations could bid for the 2010 tournament...which led to South Africa holding a World Cup blighted by poor attendances, infrastructure problems and vuvu-frickin'-zelas, while it later transpired that Morocco were bribing delegates for their votes (a fact that wasn't reported by the British press, because corruption is only a problem when there's a reason for British people to act butthurt about it...) ii.) Somalia were the federation that endorsed his nomination for the 2011 election farce...and three guesses which country got a brand new stadium funded by the FIFA Development fund when Blatter got re-elected? If anything, this is what makes FIFA look bad. FIFA's Statute 3 reads as follows: Discrimination of any kind against a Country,private person or group of people on account of race, skin colour, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion, wealth,birth or any other status,sexual orientation or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion. Yet if anybody is in violation of that or any other statute, it requires 75% of 209 delegates to agree. This begs one simple question: what does FIFA's Executive Committee actually do? There's 26 in total there, so they'd need 20 to agree to reach the 75% required to do anything - rather than 157, which just looks like FIFA trying to say they are Doing Something while the framework is in place to make sure they don't. It also has to be added that the Israeli Foreign Ministry had been pressuring various FIFA members, as well as accusing Qatar of bribing other FIFA members to make sure that Israel are kicked out of qualifying - which is in violation of Statute 17, namely: Each Member shall manage its affairs independently and with no influence from third parties. Should we be worried that I appear to know more about FIFA's own rules than they do?
The rules are simple. Blatter operates a dictatorship, held in place by his 'army' of bribes, threats, and any other necessary skulduggery. Any other 'rules' are only there for the benefit of Blatter and his merry band of thieves.
With the re-election of Blatter the Europeans need to take action to distance themselves from this corrupt organisation. Platini needs to lead this. If all European countries pulled out of the World Cup that would bring home the point.
Platini certainly has reason to, since Blatter reneged on his promise to step aside and allow him to take over in this very election. The problem with FIFA is that its built on exchanging favours, and obviously the person you want a favour from is Blatter - so he's kept in charge by people hoping he does them a favour. In other words, that makes Blatter the equivalent of Don Corleone, Tony Soprano, or worst of them all, any Prime Minister or President you care to mention.
Well at least it's easy to work out who's corrupt within the organisation now. Vote for Blatter? Clearly a fellow crook.
When do we get to see a breakdown of the voting? It should be very revealing. I've heard that Spain voted for him, which probably shouldn't surprise anyone: please log in to view this image
