Andrew Jennings

THE REVELATION that the FBI is investigating FIFA should bring an end to three decades of institutional corruption, personified in recent times by President Sepp Blatter. I have been talking with Special Agents from the Organised Crime and Racketeering Section of the Department of Justice in Washington and with an FBI Organised Crime squad from New York since they contacted me seeking evidence nearly three years ago.

[caption id="attachment_10309" align="aligncenter" width="573"] Sepp, Jack & Chuck at the CONCACAF Congress, Miami, May 2011[/caption]

Law enforcement sources in New York and Washington confirmed today that they are investigating „a major case“ involving allegations of corruption at FIFA. The probe is into allegations of fraud and bribery. It began in the North, Central American and Caribbean regional football confederation but the money trail leads back to FIFA’s HQ in Zurich, Switzerland. Unofficial sources have confirmed that Daryan Warner, eldest son of disgraced former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner of Trinidad, has become a co-operating witness with the FBI probe. Warner jnr has been resident in Florida for the last two months and clearly is not free to leave America. It has yet to be divulged what evidence the FBI have on him but it is likely to be substantial and enough to make him break family confidences in return for serving less jail time.

Who is this cyclist?

Why is this photograph embarrassing?

Where was he riding?

Why was he using a false name?

When did he shave off his moustache?

So many questions.

Are we watching the dirty deed that got him a life ban from the Olympics? Why should he care?

Thirty-eight years later he’s a member of the IOC!

Funny thing: If you look at his official IOC biography, they forgot to mention that 1976 life ban.

This fellow can hand out medals at the Games but, unlike nearly every other citizen of the planet, is refused the opportunity to win one.

Meet Patrick “Pat” McQuaid, born September 1949. Let’s wind back his biographical clock. In the mid-1970s he was one of Ireland’s top amateur cyclists, determined to be selected for the 1976 Montreal Olympics. His fear was that he might not be fit enough. Pat won the 1975 Tour of Ireland but the Irish cycling season ended in September 1975 and he needed more road racing. And not just for Ireland and the Olympic Ideal.

If Pat raced well in Montreal his chances were greater of getting a pro cycling contract and giving up school-teaching. So he was open to offers. And, Pat says, he ‘got an offer he couldn’t refuse’ – to secretly break international bans on competing in apartheid South Africa.

Six thousand miles later, in early October 1975, he left “Pat McQuaid” on the plane and emerged into the bright Spring Cape Town sunshine relabelled as “Jim Burns.” First thing he needed was a leak. OK, there’s the sign for the Gents but with the baffling Afrikaans words, “Net Blankes” – but underneath was the comforting translation “Whites Only.” Phew, no black man was going to peer at JimPat’s penis.

Football legend Romário, the great striker turned politician, sickened by Olympic ticket scandals, has launched a blistering campaign to force the International Olympic Committee to share control of the sale of tickets for the 2016 Rio Games.

The socialist Congressman last week fired off formal requests for Olympic officials to testify to a Brazilian congressional committee. Romário’s first target is veteran IOC member Patrick Hickey, a member of the IOC’s Rio Co-ordinating commission who will be intimately involved in supervising ticketing plans.

Hickey, president of the Olympic Committee of Ireland, is in the unenviable position of having to explain how his son Stephen came to be on the payroll of the company that acquired a significant slice of Ireland’s allocation of tickets for the London Olympics. There are also questions still to be answered about Hickey’s knowledge of the bribes paid to win the 2002 Olympics for Salt Lake City.

„We searched around the globe,“ Irish Olympic Committee president Pat Hickey told the Dublin Sunday World in November last year, in… 

The British Government’s denial of a visa for the president of the Belarus national Olympic committee – who also happens to be the president of Belarus – was a blow to Irish IOC member Pat Hickey, always happy to overlook his pal’s favourite sports of murder, torture, corruption and vote-rigging in his day job as the dictator of Minsk.

The love affair between Alexander Lukashenko and Hickey blossomed four years ago when the Dublin property dealer, who presides over Europe’s Olympic Committees, arbitrarily presented the thug with a special award for his „Outstanding Contribution to the Olympic Movement.“

What could this be? Lukashenko’s locking up brave young human rights protestors? The disqualification of two Belarusian athletes at the Beijing games after testing positive for more testosterone than a billy goat on Viagra? Lukashenko has kept them on the sauce with the London 2012 women’s shotput winner soon stripped of her gold medal.

Vetternwirtschaft unter Journalisten: also mal wieder ein Crosspost meines Freundes Andrew Jennings. Er schreibt über die Einzelunterschrifts-Berechtigung des FIFA-Patrons Joseph Hosni Ben Ali Blatter. Ein Umstand, den vor Jahren in Geschichten über die Desinteresse-Erklärung der FIFA im ISL-Verfahren schon Jean François Tanda berichtet hat. Ich finde allerdings, die Story, die AJ da nun veröffentlicht, ist heute wichtiger denn je, da Sepp sich schon den albernen Segen einer Vertreterin von Transparency International geholt hat und behauptet, die FIFA werde zu einer volltransparenten Organisation mutieren.

Nun ja. Die Fakten sprechen ein wenig dagegen.

Ich habe da etwas beizusteuern, eine Kleinigkeit nur, öffentlich zugängliche Daten, die leicht abrufen kann, wer sich dafür interessiert. Der Sepp darf nicht nur für die FIFA Einzelunterschriften leisten:

Hier nun der Beitrag. Viel Vergnügen:

By Andrew Jennings

FIFA president Blatter has given himself the authority to sign cheques without the approval of his staff or colleagues. Documents at the Zurich Commercial Register reveal that Blatter has had sole signatory powers for nearly two decades.

João Havelange, his predecessor as FIFA president, currently under investigation by the IOC for bribe-taking, had this power but as he lived in Rio, he allowed his then general secretary Sepp Blatter also to have sole rights.

As corruption allegations swirl around President Blatter he could, if he wanted, write himself a cheque for the $1.6 billion in FIFA’s bank account, take his empty suitcases to FIFA’s bankers UBS on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, speed on to the airport, take his last trip on a FIFA-funded jet (he never flies scheduled airlines) and abscond to safe haven in countries like Burma, Russia, Azerbaijan and Zimbabwe where he has been given warm welcomes in the last year.

by Andrew Jennings, Transparency in Sport

presentation to Senate Education, Culture and Sports Committee in Brasilia, Wednesday October 26, 2011.

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• Irish Times: Jennings urges Brazil to freeze out corrupt officials
• BBC: Investigative journalist Andrew Jennings tells Brazil that Fifa „stinks“
• Reuters: Call to bar any corrupt officials from World Cup preparations

The Truth about FIFA Corruption & Ricardo Teixeira – A verdade sobre FIFA Corrupção & Teixeira Ricardo

Good morning. Thank you for your invitation.

I have been an investigative reporter for 45 years. I research and acquire confidential documents.

Then I write books and articles and make investigation films for the BBC.

I have been investigating FIFA for 10 years.

I have considerable experience in investigating organised crime and I can assure you that FIFA ticks all the boxes in the academic definition of an Organised Crime Family.

Today I want to tell you about the latest corruption crisis at FIFA and how it will impact on the 2014 World Cup.

But first – Meet some of the members of FIFA’s 23-man Executive Committee.

Oh ja, ich glaube nicht, dass ich zu viel versprochen habe: Der putzige Doppelwettbewerb um die Fußball-Weltmeisterschaften 2018 und 2022, erdacht von Sepp dem Unfehlbaren, wird uns noch viel Freude bereiten. Ein Gastbeitrag von Andrew Jennings, der an Sepps Hofe seit sechs Jahren nicht mehr geduldet wird, der also keine Akkreditierungen für Fifa-Events erhält. AJ konzentriert sich einmal mehr auf Jack the Ripper:

By Andrew Jennings

Jack Warner must have his World Cup. FIFA’s serial kleptomaniac, now 65, knows that 2018 is his last chance to acquire the world’s most lucrative sports event and, with his greedy family, loot it. Where does he want it? Mexico.

If anything goes awry, the USA is the fallback. Both countries are captive members of Concacaf, the regional FIFA franchise controlled from Trinidad by Warner.

It’s unthinkable that the Warners would let a World Cup and the once in a lifetime chance to skim TV rights, marketing and hotel packages slip through their fingers. And of course they are well-practiced as the biggest ticket racketeers ever.

When they staged FIFA’s Under-17 championship in Trinidad in 2001, I was there to see them snaffle fast food and beverage contracts in the stadiums, security, hotels, the IT business and, with the personal approval of FIFA president Blatter, their travel agency got all 15 teams‘ flight tickets. The construction contracts came earlier.

In 2007 Warner told the BBC that his franchise must host 2018 saying, ‘There are moves to give it to England. I must fight that. I really don’t believe that we should lay down and play dead to anyone who wants to take the World Cup from Concacaf.‘ Only two countries in Warner’s franchise could stage the championship: Mexico and America.