FIFA Uncovered (2022) s01e04 Episode Script

1
There are
a lot of allegations swirling around
about corruption in soccer.
People told us about it.
We came to see evidence of it,
but getting something
sort of specific and detailed
that you could really hang your hat on
as a prosecutor was a challenge.
The FBI investigation
of FIFA began
before the infamous vote in 2010,
but in the year and a half
the investigation's been open,
they learned very little
because they haven't had this person
who can tell them what's happening.
Chuck Blazer. He's the guy they needed.
Chuck is not a whistleblower.
Chuck is a criminal
who was caught in his criminality
and was deployed
to capture other criminals,
and he made that deal
to stay out of prison.
Part of his job
is to rat out people.
Part of his job is to tell them
where there's bad behavior
and who they should be looking at.
As we said to him,
it's not for him to determine
if he was getting somebody in trouble.
It's for him to just cut through the, uh
the BS and get to the real facts.
People who had been
his confederates in criminality,
they weren't gonna get to stick around
and keep enjoying the lifestyle
to which they'd become accustomed
when he was out.
Whistleblower is
no longer quite the term.
He's singing like a canary.
He opens their eyes
to whole new universes of corruption
that they had never really contemplated.
They said,
"We're gonna give you a key chain."
"Just toss your keys on the table
when you are having dinner with somebody
and that will record the conversations."
And he said, "That is
so low-class. I wouldn't do that."
They said, "Mr. Blazer,
you will do what we tell you to do."
The hierarchy was defined for us
if you look at the ExCo,
and as with all enterprise investigations,
you wanna get to the top.
I would say when people
are talking about the explosion in 2015,
it's what happened in 2011.
That's where everything started.
And I had this feeling. From 2011,
I knew that we were going into a wall.
- Next, please.
- Mr. President?
Listen, gentlemen,
we are not in a bazaar here.
We're in the FIFA house,
so please don't intervene.
When I was asked to help FIFA
establish a governance program
that was worthy of this century,
FIFA had been battered by then,
uh, by bad press
because there'd been scandal
after scandal, dating back for years.
The allegations of corruption swirling,
well, pretty much everywhere.
Jack Warner, who was at the center
of bribery accusations, has resigned.
There's been so many corruption scandals.
It's astonishing,
just some of the allegations.
At that point, Sepp Blatter just decided
that he needed to do something
in order to, um, gain the narrative back.
Now we are going into a new period
of the FIFA transparency.
Zero tolerance. It's for everybody.
There was the strong sense,
and it was pitched this way,
that it's going to stop now, "Enough."
"You need to tell us what we need to do
to make sure we can salvage our reputation
and and pull out of this patch."
The new Ethic Committee
will have the possibility
to initiate investigation
in case of credible allegations.
My absolute expectation was
that FIFA was sincere
in improving its governance,
but I didn't realize, uh,
how much of a monarch he was.
The congress in 2011,
when I have been re-elected,
has decided three different matters.
Transparency in finances,
improve organization
of the Ethics Committee,
and the third one,
to have a better governance.
It's sufficient to have the controls
from within FIFA?
You don't want to bring
independent bodies from the outside?
We have independent, uh, chairs, chairmen
on these committees I just mentioned.
They are totally independent chairmen.
- Paid by FIFA?
- Uh, paid by FIFA, nat naturally.
Nobody is working free of charge nowadays
in professional football.
That's that's not possible.
The Independent Governance Committee,
our first meeting was
in Zurich at headquarters.
Very strange place.
The boardroom feels very bunker-ish,
and I remember just taking a seat
and people sort of sucking in their breath
because I had I I sat in his seat.
It wasn't like there was a throne
or an elevated chair
or it looked in any way different,
but it was a seat that nobody can sit in
because it was it was his.
There's a very rigid hierarchy.
There are a couple of people
at or very near the top,
and they are largely unquestioned.
Blatter used to like to say,
"We keep it in the football family."
"It's nobody's business."
"Uh, we are more private about
financial things here in Switzerland."
This is a nonprofit organization.
Where's the accountability?
What stops a few key people
right at the top
of an organization like FIFA
from giving each other raises
and enormous bonuses?
You know, it is easy to control
football when it's played on the field
because you have a referee,
you have a time limit,
and you have boundaries.
But outside the field of play,
you have no referee,
you have no, uh, time limit,
and you have no boundaries.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
- Thank you, Al Jazeera.
- Much appreciated.
Chuck was the first cooperator,
but we had a number
of cooperating witnesses after that.
Our maths is very easy.
We give three to Brazil,
three to Argentina,
and three to the president.
And a million and a half
to seven presidents.
- Seven?
- Seven presidents.
- A million and a half.
- Why?
Because there is a country
to which we do not give anything.
Because he's honest.
Who can be hurt by this deal?
Everyone! We will all end up
in jail! Everyone. You. Me.
Jack Warner was
right up there in the top three
of people they were most eager to get.
Because of his relationship with Blazer,
they had an enormous amount
of documentary evidence of corruption
on Jack Warner's sons.
They were laundering money for him
throughout the world,
particularly in the US.
We went to their condominium.
It was early in the morning.
We knew that Jack Warner was gonna be
in the country at the time.
Basically woke them up, arrested them.
And while FBI agents
are handcuffing his sons,
they say to him, "Listen, Jack,
this is your opportunity
to get your sons off the hook."
He was a high-ranking government official
in Trinidad at the time.
They couldn't legally arrest him
without special diplomatic permission,
which they didn't have.
He looked them in the eye
and wished his sons the best of luck,
and hopes they get a good lawyer,
but he's not gonna help
anybody do anything.
And with that,
I declare open the 62nd FIFA Congress
here in Budapest, 2012.
- Welcome to Budapest. Thank you.
- Thank you.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter
was there
to tell delegates that the organization
is involved in a reform process.
This year, the countries
of North and Central America
and the Caribbean, which make up CONCACAF,
had the important task
of installing the fourth president
in their confederation's 49-year history.
Jeffrey Webb, a 47-year-old banker
from the Cayman Islands,
immediately emphasized the subject
on which he'd campaigned.
We're not a perfect family.
We are a family.
And in every family,
we have problems, we have issues,
and how you get through those issues
is we work our way through them.
You're coming off of this major scandal.
Scandal after scandal after scandal,
and here comes Jeffrey Webb.
We must move the clouds
and allow the sunshine in.
Charismatic, very charismatic,
has the ability to calm the waters
and to save the day
and turn CONCACAF around.
But we have a responsibility to make sure
that the past will never be repeated.
He was groomed.
He had all the backing
from FIFA that he needed.
He knew full well what he was going into.
Jeff Webb, as soon as he had got
his feet under the table at CONCACAF,
had immediately started asking for bribes.
Jeff wants 15.
Then it ended up being 12.
Welcome, Jeffrey Webb.
How much went
to the CONMEBOL people?
Ended up being ten.
Turns out that Jeffrey Webb was every bit
as corrupt as Jack Warner was before him.
He was every bit as dirty. Jeffrey Webb
was demanding 10 million, 15 million.
He wanted gigantic bribes.
And we were just amazed
to watch people slotting into roles,
committing crimes themselves,
and it was just astonishing to us,
but also gave us a sense of the
the scale of what we were up against.
There were undoubtedly people
who absolutely knew
what they were doing was wrong,
and they did it anyway.
But I think over time,
the lines between right and wrong
had been blurred.
You would have
people seeing it as perhaps,
"That is the rules of engagement."
First of all,
Alexandra Wrage, sitting on my right side,
is here as a specialist
on integrity checks.
The congress itself was
just such a strange strange event.
Lavish and and sort of decorated
with women dressed in long gowns,
standing very still
as if they were statues,
and it was very, um, disconcerting.
Just the excess around FIFA continued to
to startle me all the way through.
Who wouldn't enjoy that lifestyle
in an ongoing way?
The question is, what are you willing
to do to stay committed to it?
Qatar Airways has
three flights a day into Kathmandu.
Many passengers are
Nepalese workers taking a break
from World Cup-related construction jobs
in Doha.
Outside Arrivals,
this woman waits for her husband.
It will not be a joyous reunion.
When he left for Qatar six months ago,
she was his wife.
Today, she's his widow.
Because the World Cup is on,
the workers will have now
better conditions,
not only in Qatar,
but in all the Arabic countries,
thanks to the World Cup.
The Indian
and Nepalese embassies suggest
that well over a thousand guest workers
have died in the last two years.
But in no way can FIFA accept
to be responsible
for the welfare of of, uh, workers.
They belong, uh, to commercial
and industrial companies
of other countries.
We couldn't do that.
Thank you for the question. I like that.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Fifty-two hundred.
That's not the number of fans
or players or sponsorship benefactors.
Fifty-two hundred is
the number of workers expected to die
building the infrastructure
for the games by 2022.
It is unacceptable
for any major event to be built
on the bloods of innocents.
End of story.
That is as simple as it goes.
The perception
in the outside world, sir,
is that that is exactly
what's happening here.
And that is
that is a wrongful perception.
To start off with, World Cup-related
World Cup projects are
there is no deaths and no fatalities
that occurred on them.
No stadiums
have been built yet.
We're starting to build them.
But lots of people
have died in other projects.
And there are steps being taken
towards resolving that as well.
I'm not embarrassed of saying
that when we started off,
the situation was horrendous.
Plain and simple.
But one of the legacy objectives
of this tournament
is reforming the working conditions
and the labor reforms in the country.
We have the desire to fix.
We have the intention to fix.
It's not a PR stunt.
That's the fundamental part.
When FIFA held
their own investigation,
which was done by the former
New York prosecutor Michael Garcia,
and people expected a real bombshell,
but they gave the Qatari bid
a clean bill of health.
FIFA's own Ethics Committee
launched an investigation
into these claims,
but there now seem to be
conflicting views on the final report.
Mr. Garcia
has now disowned the report.
I don't think
you can take this report seriously now,
because we did early this morning
when it was published,
and then suddenly the person
who'd done the investigation disowned it.
Just hours
after the report was published,
Michael Garcia, the man
who spent two years on the investigation,
branded the report "erroneous,"
and said he would appeal to FIFA.
The tone at the top.
What an institution
like FIFA needs is leadership.
Leadership that sends a message
that the rules apply to everyone.
Leadership that wants to understand
and learn from any mistakes or missteps
the Ethics Committee may identify.
It is that kind of leadership
that breathes life into a code of ethics
because true reform comes from changing
the culture of the organization.
As the Independent
Governance Committee,
we had a long list of proposals
that we had made.
You know, how, uh, salaries are set
and how new members are elected,
whether the president should have
an age limit or a term limit,
standard governance issues,
and we we weren't getting
very far with them.
And we were at another meeting,
and a recommendation
came down again from Blatter
that the group start wrapping up,
that it spend less money and less time.
What became clear to me
was that it was a whitewash, a PR stunt,
and, um, then I was out.
I had not ever been involved
in a situation
as cynical as this turned out to be.
Sepp Blatter started getting consumed
by his own greed,
his own ambition to stay in power.
He he had agreed to leave the seat
to Michel Platini,
then people convinced him otherwise.
At some point,
he started being delusional
and wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
He was hallucinating that he's going
to bring peace in the Middle East.
It's quite insane, um,
to to be in this position.
You have such a potential impact
because football is so important
in term of, uh, what it means in countries
and how it help countries to go through
good things, bad things, etcetera.
FIFA is just beyond everything.
The FIFA president is
in the same group of people
as the head of state.
I think it is a recognition,
not only for my name.
It is a recognition of FIFA,
the recognition
what FIFA is doing all around the world.
I don't think there's a single day
I was not pinching myself
by thinking, "No, no, no, it's a dream."
Maybe Blatter was the only one
thinking that it could be forever.
Sepp Blatter, he was a master operator,
and he was determined to stay in charge.
Blatter promises continuity and that
he'll keep the development money coming,
and there is essentially no reforms,
and Blatter becomes absolutely consummate
at the external politics,
which is about how FIFA relates
and flourishes in the world.
This is shake hands for peace.
I have spoken
with Prime Minister Netanyahu
to organize in months,
in a year, whatever,
but the will is there,
to organize a football match for peace
between Palestine and, uh, Israel,
and we organize it in Zurich.
Uh, he will be there,
and he said
he will shake hands with everybody.
Between 2011 and 2015,
it became too much,
in term of financial power
and in term of political power.
And Blatter is responsible for that.
Having a life as if nothing has happened,
supporting reforms,
but in the meantime,
you are not reforming yourself.
They just try to put some painting
on the wall to make it look better,
but at the end, it was exactly the same.
People were just not able to, uh,
to to stop them.
It's true that he was
close to the to the sun.
We were, in a way, close to the sun,
and that's where I would say FIFA died.
The Justice Department's case
against FIFA is evolving in secret,
but they're making incredible traction.
They're building what becomes,
in their opinion,
a watertight case
showing widespread corruption
throughout world soccer.
Among the most important allegations
they make
is the $10 million paid by South Africa
in the name of the diaspora fund
to Jack Warner and to Chuck Blazer.
That's documented. They have it proved.
They write it in black and white
in a way no one's done before.
The $10 million
African diaspora fund.
There could hardly be a more valid cause,
and there was never any legacy program.
It was a bribe to vote for South Africa.
Blazer pleaded guilty to that.
That's in an actual document
that Chuck Blazer signed
and pleaded guilty to.
Obviously, Jack Warner denies,
and it's never come to trial,
but that accusation is is there
in black and white
in the criminal indictment
and in Chuck Blazer's guilty plea.
When Blazer pled guilty
in a sealed courtroom,
that, I think, brought home to me,
if we were doing this with the doors open,
this would be, um, an enormous moment.
The racketeering conspiracy crime
that he pled guilty to,
we knew someday
we were going to put into an indictment
and go arrest people.
Jeffrey, is this election
gonna be a foregone conclusion on Friday?
There's gonna be an election.
Someone's gonna win.
It's gonna be Sepp Blatter,
isn't it?
I don't know. You're telling me.
You're the expert. I think the election
is great for FIFA. It's good for FIFA.
Why do you still think
Sepp Blatter is right for football
and it's not time for change?
I didn't tell you I thought that.
So, goodbye!
I can remember very well driving
across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan
to go to FBI headquarters
to wait for the news
coming in from Switzerland.
The sort of calm before the storm,
buzzing with the excitement
of this moment right before.
We had indicted 14 people.
We had no idea how many
we would be able to arrest on that day.
May 27th, 2015.
It was like
something out of a film script.
I remember waking up
and initially seeing a missed call,
and then seeing
a couple of text messages,
and then seeing some WhatsApps,
and then going on social media.
Suddenly, the reality is coming,
uh, just smashing in your face.
I got a call telling me
that the FBI came in.
And a number of people have been arrested,
including Jeffrey Webb and other members.
I called Jeffrey Webb's wife,
and I will never forget.
She said that the guy said to Jeffrey,
"You can hug your son because you will
not see him for a very long time."
The FBI goes after FIFA.
Arrests happening right now
over corruption allegations
involving the world football's
governing body.
Corruption crackdown
going down right now.
Swiss police, we understand,
raided one of the main FIFA hotels.
There was little bits of information
coming out here and there.
And then you see
the pictures of the ExCo members
being led out of the Baur au Lac
shrouded in in bedsheets.
Fourteen people
are actually implicated
in widespread, systemic corruption.
Some of the most important men
in world football were arrested.
One of the men who has been taken away is
the president of CONCACAF, Jeffrey Webb.
You really couldn't believe it,
but then the pieces
of the jigsaw fit together.
It was tremendously exciting
hearing the news
that one and then two
and three and four had been arrested,
and I couldn't believe
it was finally happening.
Sepp Blatter
isn't among those arrested,
but this afternoon
presides over a governing body in crisis.
It was really exciting,
but it also didn't last that long
because I had to get home
and try to sleep for a couple of hours
before the press conference
the next morning.
The Department of Justice held
a video press conference in New York.
Such an astonishing day in FIFA history,
in football history
Alex, I'm just going to interrupt you.
Loretta Lynch has just stepped up
to the podium.
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you all for being here today.
The 14 defendants charged
in the indictment we are unsealing today
include high-ranking officials of FIFA.
Two generations of soccer officials
used their positions of trust
to solicit bribes
to decide who would televise games,
where the games would be held,
and who would run the organization
overseeing organized soccer worldwide.
When the FBI and the DOJ and the IRS
finally deliver in 2015 to the public
the fruits of this investigation,
it's a stunning laundry list
of corruption at every level.
They didn't put out one thing.
They put out hundreds of things.
This really is the World Cup of fraud,
and today, we are issuing FIFA a red card.
The first time
you read the indictment,
it's like a tidal wave hits.
You're getting punched
every different direction.
You got these people, senior people,
accused of bribery and corruption.
All of these defendants
abused the US financial system
I think it was the scale of it
that shocked and surprised so many people.
I would put it in the same category
as Lance Armstrong or Oscar Pistorius
or the Russian doping scandal.
They were expected to uphold
the rules that keep soccer honest
and to protect the integrity of the game.
Instead, they corrupted
the business of worldwide soccer
to serve their interests
and to enrich themselves.
I'm getting phone calls
and questions from my news colleagues.
Suddenly, sport set the news agenda.
The US authorities suspect those arrested
of taking part in a 24-year scheme
to enrich themselves
The way Loretta Lynch
and Jim Comey talked about FIFA,
they used charges that normally
are associated with the Mafia
or, uh, Mexican drug cartels.
The game was hijacked.
This hijacking is being met
with a very aggressive
prosecutorial response
in order to change behavior.
This investigation has been
long and painstaking, and it is not over.
The US is vowing
this is only the beginning
to rid the nonprofit organization,
in charge of the most popular sport
in the world, of corruption.
Whoa, wait. Hold on.
You're not just saying
these people did it.
You might be suggesting
FIFA's responsible for this.
And if that's the case,
that's a potential planet-killing event,
uh, for FIFA.
Wow. It's It was
It was incredible. It was, uh, shameful.
Uh, it was unbelievable.
The impact of these arrests,
of these images, was just disastrous.
I mean, FIFA became toxic.
FIFA became a a criminal organization.
UEFA is deeply shocked
and saddened by them.
These events show once again
that corruption is deeply rooted
in FIFA's culture.
I feel let down.
I'm sickened and fed up.
Enough is enough.
Clearly,
if these things were true,
there was a big problem
at the heart of how FIFA was operating.
The buck stops somewhere,
and Blatter and Valcke had been in place,
especially Blatter, for a long time.
It's like the end of the world.
That's the feeling you have. It's
The organization will just collapse.
You are not anymore in control,
and the system
will just smash you in in pieces.
Sepp Blatter wasn't charged himself
by the US authorities
with any corruption himself.
But you're talking about people
that he'd sat round the most senior table
at FIFA with for decades
and had been his allies as well.
Will you resign, Mr. Blatter?
FIFA's invisible man
shows his face at last.
Sepp Blatter may be on the brink,
but it's clear
he's planning to brazen it out.
The Americans,
they wanted absolutely my head,
but they have realized I was not the man
who organized corruption
with the members of the ExCo.
The bribery, the kickbacks,
the pay-to-play, so to speak,
in order to get contracts,
none of that would have happened
without the
the interaction
that these executives had at FIFA,
the various hierarchies and rules at FIFA.
These are unprecedented
and difficult times for FIFA.
I'm sure more bad news may follow,
but it is necessary
to begin to restore trust
in our organization.
There was just a lot of shock,
and people were stunned
by the words that were being used.
You know, when you're talking
about corruption and fraud
and the FBI and the attorney general,
there's no way
this election can take place.
Will Sepp Blatter survive?
That's a question on everyone's mind.
But because it was FIFA,
because it was Sepp Blatter,
it wasn't surprising,
and it added to the drama.
- I want the right person.
- Is that Mr. Blatter or Prince Ali?
Everybody knows that one.
Mr. Blatter has done well for Africa.
He has done well for Africa.
They love Blatter because Blatter put
some of the countries on the map.
Before, I was really proud
to be a member of the ExCo of FIFA.
You cannot be proud at that moment.
When I heard
that the accusations of corruption
towards some people were concrete,
I really became angry.
And I always said then,
"If one of us is corrupt, we all are,"
and that is precisely what happened.
I'm being blamed for this storm.
Well, fine, then.
Fine! I'll take the responsibility.
I think he had just reached the point
where he believed
in his own invulnerability.
I'm with you, and simply
simply, I'd like to stay with you.
I just want to stay with you.
I want to continue with you.
People were arrested,
and they were walked out of the hotel,
some of them with sheets
over their heads like common criminals.
France, booth one.
And then the football associations
around the world
went ahead and re-elected Sepp Blatter
like nothing had happened.
Mr. Blatter is elected FIFA president
for the term of 2015-2019.
With all eyes on FIFA,
the most powerful man in football,
Sepp Blatter,
has won a fifth term
as president of that organization.
Sepp Blatter was
the Godfather of football.
To be elected five times as
as president,
to have reigned at FIFA
from 1998 until 2015.
And in his eyes,
and I think so many other people's eyes,
he was untouchable.
But he was the man
who was head at what was
without doubt the most turbulent,
darkest period in in FIFA's history.
And if you are the person
who has been head of an organization,
you are culpable to some degree.
But this is Sepp Blatter,
and this was FIFA.
The Department of Justice had
questions about what FIFA was all about
because there was this pivot.
"Are we a criminal organization,
or are we a victim?"
You know, from their perspective,
maybe it is a Mafia-style organization.
Marco Villiger, the chief legal officer,
who's really the person
who hired us and also supervised us,
he was not remotely associated
with any of the issues.
To their credit,
FIFA gave Marco full authority
to do what he thought was necessary
to comply with FIFA's legal obligations
and to make sure that FIFA survives.
One of the things we had to do
was educate the authorities,
especially the US authorities,
about what FIFA really was.
DOJ wanted us to show, not tell,
through really two things.
One was extensive, absolute cooperation.
Huge numbers of documents and information.
But there's also a broader question
about management of FIFA.
Can the management
that had run the place before
continue to run it
when you're trying to reform it?
There's only so much
that even Sepp Blatter can brazen out.
He came under
absolutely intolerable pressure.
The elections are over.
Despite the fact that the FIFA members
have elected me again,
this result doesn't have
the support of the football world,
which is why I have decided
to lay down my mandate
at an extraordinary elective congress.
Thank you for your attention.
Breaking news now.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter is resigning
from his position,
even despite his recent re-election.
Amanda, what a stunning turn of events
from a man who appeared to see himself
as above all the controversy
just last week.
Very quickly,
Sepp Blatter had a change of heart,
which I don't think
anybody really saw coming.
I felt that, you know, uh,
that this this was a judgement
from the from the God, you know.
Uh, because he did a lot of things
to damage me, to damage my reputation.
So, I'm thinking
that God accepted my prayers.
This is for North Korea 2026.
Oh, okay.
But, uh
But he paid the the price in 2015.
- Where is my security? Come on.
- I think we've just sealed the deal.
Here we go, Sepp. Thanks.
Okay, Sepp, it's all there, as discussed.
Thank you.
Blatter may be going,
but it won't be quietly.
He wanted to go
out of the front door on his own terms
and not be thrown out the back door
or be led out of the door
with a sheet over his head.
He said he was going to step aside,
but was going to be in place long enough
to oversee the election of his successor.
So many had failed to dethrone Blatter
that the question was, who is left
after all the allegations of corruption,
and who is actually
a realistic presidential candidate?
What happened then
was that, of course,
Michel Platini was the candidate
of UEFA and of European football
to become the new president of FIFA
because Mr. Blatter
had decided to withdraw.
So, we are all supporting Michel Platini
at the time,
and all, uh, you know,
hoping that he would bring
the new wind that FIFA needed.
It was very important
to have a replacement
who had credibility
across the board, right?
As somebody who was not seen
as a creature of the prior, uh, regime.
That was critical because you don't get
a second bite at this apple.
For Platini, when he saw Blatter floored,
uh, everything seemed to be a formality
and he would become FIFA president.
But
There was always gonna be a "but."
That is when the the leak emerged
of this disloyal payment,
as, uh, it has become known,
between Blatter and Michel Platini.
And then
and then started another another
another
The Swiss, uh, attorney
The Swiss, they have received,
uh, information
that has happened in 2011
that I I paid, uh
uh, whatever, two million,
uh, to Michel Platini.
In 2011, there was a frustration
that Blatter kept staying on.
Platini was obviously
lining himself up to go from UEFA to FIFA,
and people thought
that he might do it in 2011
and he might challenge Sepp Blatter.
But for him to get
a two million Swiss franc payment
from Blatter's FIFA just before that
Platini literally sent in an invoice.
It was a printed invoice.
And it was then paid
through the books of FIFA
just before Blatter was due
to stand again.
It's just a terrible look.
I was shocked. I was shocked.
Then, uh, they have immediately opened
a case against me
and nobody added what generally they do,
uh, that, uh
uh, he's innocent until, uh
until declared guilty.
Nobody has ever mentioned that.
If everybody else who stole a bicycle,
they will say that, but not for me.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter
and his possible successor,
UEFA chief Michel Platini,
have been provisionally suspended
for 90 days
by the global football body's
Ethics Committee.
This morning,
its Ethics Committee,
which Blatter actually set up,
said they were suspending him
and his potential successor,
Michel Platini.
And we get told that the payment
is for money Blatter had promised Platini
when he was working for FIFA in 2002,
but never got round to giving him.
Finally, he'd given him
two million Swiss francs
to provide him with the balance
nine years after he finished the work.
This news broke
after the arrests in Zurich,
an environment where people
were being criminally charged with,
and some people were pleading guilty,
of bribes and kickbacks.
Actually, it isn't the same,
but I think part of what they were
charged with under the FIFA code
was conflict of interest.
It's against your duty of loyalty
to the organization
that you're working for.
And this was the moment, really,
when there was, in an official document,
a payment being made for Sepp Blatter.
It felt like the nail
in his coffin, really.
Sepp Blatter and the European soccer boss
Michel Platini have both been banned
from soccer for eight years
by the Ethics Committee
of football's global governing body.
He said he was sorry,
though mainly for himself.
I am now suspended eight years.
Suspended eight years. But I will fight.
I will fight for me,
and I will fight for FIFA.
Suspended eight years for what?
The decision means Blatter's
17 years at the helm of world soccer
will end in disgrace.
That's what caused Blatter's fall.
Not all the other things,
not the arrests, not the US indictment.
That is what led
to Sepp Blatter being banned as well.
Sepp built
the new FIFA headquarters as his home.
Nobody believed that, um,
Sepp will move out of the FIFA house.
Uh, and his departure was a disaster
for, you know, for some.
Mr. Platini
was then eventually suspended.
The UEFA Executive Committee met,
and, uh, they decided unanimously
to ask me whether I would be running,
pending what will happen
with the suspension of Michel Platini.
At that time,
we were all convinced he will be back,
and then he's the candidate,
and, uh, that's it.
For Platini,
Infantino is
a kind of football civil servant.
He didn't see Infantino's ambitions.
He didn't understand them
or see them coming.
Infantino decided he doesn't want
to remain general secretary all his life,
and he had
a role model right there, Blatter.
They come from Swiss villages
ten kilometers away from each other.
When Infantino came to see Platini
to tell him,
"While you're suspended,
I'll be a candidate,
and if you ever come back,
I'll let you have the job back,"
Platini is naive enough to believe it.
There's no criminal investigation.
Can you guarantee the World Cups
will be played in Russia and Qatar,
or is it too early to say?
I mean, yes, yes, now, I
Today, if you ask me the question
twenty to eight,
yes, the World Cup will be played
in Russia and in Qatar.
If it would be one wave, it would be okay,
but for me, it was week after week
or month after month something more.
Jérôme Valcke,
the secretary general of FIFA,
has been suspended.
Soccer's world governing body said
it had been made aware
of a series of allegations
involving the secretary general.
The 54-year-old has been put on leave
and released from his duties
until further notice.
I have no feeling
that we did anything wrong,
but we are in a world
where everything has to be perfect,
and we were not perfect.
I have never, never, uh,
never taken any money.
I have never asked money also.
I have never asked FIFA to give me more.
They gave it.
If you want to run FIFA
with the ethics code, good luck.
I'm not sure you can do that.
I mean, that's not the real world.
The Russian Football Federation
has also said it'll back Infantino,
who is currently UEFA's general secretary.
Done everything
what needs to be done?
I still have time,
but I've done already quite a lot, yes.
Very well.
- How's it going?
- Thank you. Very, very, very, very well.
Okay? Thank you very much.
The number of votes for Gianni is 115.
Congratulations, Mr. Gianni Infantino.
Platini understood,
after Infantino was elected president,
that Infantino was an enemy
and hadn't been an ally
for a very long time.
He was in the right place
at the right time
with the right friends.
I accept this election, Mr. President.
- Good, thanks.
- Oof!
So, when Infantino, uh, won the election
The destiny.
The fate. Everything happens for a reason.
Al-Qadr, as the Arabs say.
one of the first things he did
was gesture widely and say
The money of FIFA is your money.
It's not the money of the FIFA president.
And what we understand from that
is that the abiding quid pro quos
and status quo
that gave them money
is gonna remain in place.
You interpreted it that way
because you have a a wrong mindset
about about me or about FIFA,
uh, at that time.
When I say
FIFA had just gone through
that enormous scandal.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So, the mindset was fashioned
by what had happened.
You're right. You're absolutely right.
And the money of FIFA has to serve
for the development of football
and not for any anything else,
and if you
I meant that money is the money
of football, of football development,
of all of you who have to develop football
in your country.
It's not money of a few people.
Don't misappropriate that money.
Use it where you have to use it.
Canada, Mexico, and USA have been
selected by the FIFA Congress
to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Thank you.
As far as we do know,
the kind of institutionalized corruption
of FIFA
has been exorcised.
People want to know
why you've come to Moscow.
I received an invitation from Mr. Putin.
"You come to the World Cup."
But I actually think
that what we've got now
in terms of a big concern
about FIFA and its direction
is actually, um, on the level above that,
which is about football's place
in a difficult and divided world.
It's something that's embedded in our DNA,
that we're inherently passionate about.
That's why it's a unifier.
We're part of the world.
We're a part of the world.
We wanna host the world.
We want the world to see who we are.
And we're known for our hospitality,
for the way we treat our guests.
It's not only a matter of pride.
It's a fundamental part of our culture
to treat our guests
in a hospitable manner,
making them feel welcome and feel safe.
In 2010, World Cups were awarded by FIFA
in unacceptable ways
with unacceptable consequences.
Human rights, equality, democracy,
the core interests of football
were not in the starting eleven
until many years later.
The migrant workers injured
or families of those who died
in the build-up to the World Cup
must be cared for.
There is no room for employers
who do not secure the freedom
and safety of World Cup workers.
No room for leaders
that cannot host the women's game.
No room for hosts
that cannot legally guarantee
the safety and respect of LGBTQ+ people
coming to this theater of dreams.
The fact is,
the World Cup is taking place in Qatar.
They have survived all the allegations
that were made against them.
The legacy remains to be seen,
but they're hosting it
because they are so wealthy.
That's the reason.
Money is the reason
why they're hosting it.
And Pelé!
People are always gonna
really love football and enjoy football.
That's the whole point.
It's compelling.
It's magnetic. It's captivating.
It's magical.
It's the job of the people who run it
to make sure
that they steer it in a direction
that embodies good values,
that's worthy of all that passion.
'Cause it's it's really clear
that football can be abused,
um, and exploited,
and the passions of, uh, people
who love the game
can be exploited for malevolent purpose.
Dictators have used sport
for propaganda, basically,
and that's happened
incredibly recently in 2018 in Russia.
The world will witness a welcoming Russia,
a warm Russia,
a Russia which is open to the world.
We don't have to look back
to Argentina in '78 or Berlin in 1936.
It's happening, and we've got to be
very, very alive to that.
Big sport does need to be extremely honest
about the power that it holds.
Ah!
Guys!
And whether it represents the force
for good in the world that it wants to
or just a power
that can be bought
and be at the service of dictators
and the most powerful
and wealthy countries around the world.
When I had to leave,
I wouldn't like to leave,
but I had to leave,
uh, because somewhere
there is always an end.
When I am looking, uh, backwards,
my feeling is a feeling of thanks.
The the international football
has two billion people
which are attached to this game,
and they go always back
to play in the streets,
to play everywhere because they believe
in the good of the game.
And I am happy to have contributed,
uh, to some of historical moments
in football.
And this makes me very proud.
We all grew up
with the World Cup and FIFA.
But if you are not on the inside,
you never know about all the shadiness,
about this kind of Mafia,
people who shared out obscene amounts
of money amongst themselves,
carved up
disproportionate amounts of power.
If you ask
if FIFA can get ever away from corruption,
you have to ask if the world
ever can get away from corruption.
I say, "No, it can't."
As it is structured now,
no, not not possible.
You're president of FIFA.
You're not a head of state.
Who elected you? An executive committee?
After what shady deal
or alliance or compromise?
Who really gives you your power?
The players.
"An injustice anywhere
is a threat to justice everywhere."
The impacts go
to every single corner of the planet.
The impacts go
to every single boy and girl
who dreamt, as I did,
as a little kid running around
on a dusty field outside their house.
You were at FIFA
for more than 40 years.
Um, president from 1998,
but so many of the ExCo
and so many people that you knew
were arrested,
and, you know, have faced charges,
some have gone to prison,
um, but you were you were in charge,
you were the president.
Do do you feel a responsibility
that that occurred
when you were at the top?
I am I have a responsibility
for the FIFA
and all the members
who were working into the FIFA.
I have to take the responsibility.
But members of committees
which were coming
from other countries and other cultures,
uh, I cannot be responsible.
I'm sorry for for the FIFA,
but but I cannot be morally responsible.
Um
My conscience is clear.
I'm, uh, uh
And I can sleep well,
even now I can sleep well,
uh, because I cannot be responsible
for that.
I regret this has happened,
but I'm not responsible.