Fifa has dropped another bombshell alleging in court documents that a 10-million dollars bribe had been paid to secure the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa.
Fifa issued a detailed statement on Wednesday in which it said it was lodging a claim to recover tens of millions of dollars it says were paid by allegedly corrupt Fifa to secure various World Cup's including the soccer showpiece in South Africa.
According to the documents Defendents Jack Warner of Concacaf, his Daryan and co-conspirator Charles Blazer, had engineered a $10 million payoff in exchange for Executive Committee votes regarding where the 2010 FIFA World Cup would be hosted.
Fifa says the Warner's had by that stage already established close ties to South Africa during South Africa’s failed bid to host the 2006 FIFA World CupTM.
It says the money, in cash in a briefcase, was delivered to
A. Defendants’ Warner and Blazer’s $10 Million 2010 FIFA World CupTM Vote
Scheme.
As stated, until 2011, the location of the FIFA World CupTM was determined by a vote of
the FIFA Executive Committee. Hosting a FIFA World CupTM is a coveted event. It provides
great prestige, economic benefits, and improvements in local and sporting infrastructure, with
hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into a host country.
The bid process to host a FIFA World CupTM has been highly competitive. Every member of the FIFA Executive Committee is
bound by the rules and process requiring an objective analysis of bids. In addition, every FIFA
Executive Committee member is bound by a duty of loyalty to FIFA. Arguably, no Executive
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Committee action is more important than how they discharge their duties relating to the premier
FIFA event, the FIFA World CupTM.
It is now apparent that multiple members of FIFA’s Executive Committee abused their
positions and sold their votes on multiple occasions.
As the Grand Jury alleged in the Superseding Indictment in United States v. Hawit, 15-cr-252 (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 25, 2015), Dkt. No.
102, Defendant Jack Warner, together with his co-conspirators Charles Blazer (who has admitted his crimes and pleaded guilty), Defendant Warner’s son Daryan Warner, and other coconspirators not named in the Superseding Indictment, engineered a $10 million payoff in exchange for Executive Committee votes regarding where the 2010 FIFA World CupTM would
be hosted.
The scheme built off Defendant Warner’s corrupt vote in 1992 for Morocco to host
the 1998 FIFA World CupTM, when he accepted a bribe from the Moroccan bid committee in
exchange for his vote for Morocco. Twelve years later, the Morocco bid committee once again
offered Defendant Warner and Charles Blazer (who now also had a vote as an Executive
Committee member) a bribe, this time of $1 million.
But Defendant Warner and his family had already established close ties to South Africa
during South Africa’s failed bid to host the 2006 FIFA World CupTM. For example, Daryan
Warner had organized a series of friendly matches among CONCACAF teams to be played in
South Africa, relying on his father’s network of contacts there. Daryan Warner had also served
as his father’s bagman, traveling to a hotel in Paris, France to receive a briefcase with $10,000 in
cash from a high-ranking South African bid committee official and immediately returning to
Trinidad and Tobago to give it to Defendant Warner.
Ultimately, given Defendant Warner’s strong illicit ties to the South African bid
committee, the South Africans offered a more attractive bribe of $10 million in exchange for
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Warner’s, Blazer’s, and a third Executive Committee member’s votes.
Warner and his coconspirators lied to FIFA about the nature of the payment, disguising it as support for the benefit of the “African Diaspora” in the Caribbean region, when in reality it was a bribe.
They disguised and funneled the bribe money through the financial accounts of FIFA, member associations, and
the 2010 FIFA World CupTM local organizing committee. At the time of the scheme, Warner
was a member of the FIFA Executive Committee, a FIFA vice president, and the president of
both CONCACAF and the Caribbean Football Union (“CFU”), which had 31 member
associations in its ranks. Blazer was also a member of FIFA’s Executive Committee, at times a
member of FIFA’s marketing and television committees, and the general secretary of
CONCACAF. They breached the fundamental duties they owed to FIFA, CFU, and
CONCACAF and stole $10 million.
