As our Philippine team prepares for the 2015
FIFA Asia Qualifying games, issues of bribery within the organization have been
increasing and is horrifyingly plausible.
FIFA is the governing body of association
football, futsal and beach soccer. (Wikipedia)
The bribery issue sprouted near the end of
May 2015, as 14 people were impeached by the United States Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation
Division (IRS-CI) because of wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering. Since
then, more and more irregulatories were reported and the United States Attorney
General simultaneously announced the unsealing of the indictments and the prior
guilty pleas by four football executives and two corporations.
The most recent bribery case was on October 16th,
Friday, the German magazine Der Spiegel averred that around $6 million had been
used to bribe four Asian members of FIFA's Executive Committee to give 2006
World Cup in Germany. Earlier accusations also came from another German paper,
Die Zeit, saying that Saudi Arabia's support helped South Africa by a 12-11 votes
to host the 2010 World Cup.
This is on top of an on-going questioning of
the legitimacy and legality of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and
Qatar, respectively, awarded by FIFA.
The German Football Chief admitted receiving
6.7 million Euros fund from FIFA but explained that is was a subsidy for the
2006 World Cup instead being the reported bribery money. The German soccer
great Franz Beckenbauer is now under questioning.
Stay tuned for blow-by-blow updates of the current investigation of Ethics Committee and
other organization.
Unaffected of the biggest crime in sports, matches
around the world continue for the big match at Chile set on 2017 (updates from:
http://www.fifa.com/u17worldcup/index.html). Making us think that the world is
still deaf and blind about the dark side of soccer – or generally, of sports.
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