Measures announced by FIFA fall far short of what is required to clean out corruption at FIFA and its associations, claims the anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International.
FIFA announced another task force made up of 10 FIFA confederation members and one independent chair who has not yet been named. This will not be sufficient to win back trust in FIFA, according to TI.
So far nine current and former officials face corruption charges in the United States. Those charged include officials on the highest FIFA committees and responsible for FIFA’s governance and compliance. There are on-going investigations into the awarding of the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, and the Swiss authorities are investigating 81 suspicious activities involving FIFA. Transparency International said that without a real independent reform commission there can be no confidence that FIFA can end its corruption crisis.
Neil Martinson, Transparency International’s Director of Communications, said the world footballing body had failed fans and supporters: “FIFA is a rotten democracy where votes can be bought, bribes can be made and money can be laundered. It has promised reform many times before and failed dismally.”
Transparency International with the #NewFIFANow campaign and the International Trade Union Confederation will continue to put pressure on the sponsors to ensure FIFA makes the kind of root and branch reforms that will lead to a new culture of integrity.
TI says that to clean up FIFA has to:
appoint independent non-executives to the Executive Committee, changing the President is not enough
conduct independent integrity checks. FIFA announced it would introduce in-house integrity checks as part of the Ethics Committee remit
complete public declarations of interests; publication of salaries is not enough
two terms limited to four years and no more
complete financial transparency for FIFA, the regional confederations and the national football associations
The campaigners make the point that Sepp Blatter was in charge when most of the corruption took place over many years and call on him to step down immediately. On July 20 in Zurich FIFA Executive Committee, chaired by President Blatter, agreed on a Task Force composed of two representatives of each of the AFC, CAF, CONCACAF and UEFA, as well as of one representative from each of CONMEBOL and the OFC. They also decided that an extraordinary Congress will take place in Zurich on February 26, 2016, when a new FIFA President will be elected.
