Tag Archives: Sepp Blatter

FIFA Corruption and Small State Soft Power

Vladimir Putin made a good point in his condemnation of the indictment of 14 FIFA officials by the US Department of Justice this week: is this any of their business? Yes, FIFA is a corrupt organization. Yes, many members of FIFA’s all-powerful Executive Committee have been implicated in a number of corruption scandals. Yes, Putin has skin in the game because Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup as part of a rigged dual bidding process in 2010 that also gave Quatar its controversial 2022 World Cup–a process that allegedly took corruption to a much higher level and that now is under investigation. Furthermore, given his aggressive and deceptive policies against sovereign nations formerly in the Soviet orbit, Putin is not a likely candidate to occupy the moral high ground in issues other than riding topless through the Siberian tundra.

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FIFA President Sepp Blatter in 2010 disclosing Russia and Qatar as hosts of the 2018 and 2022 Word Cups (BBC News)

Yet, Putin makes a point worth exploring. Here is what Putin said about the arrested FIFA officials: “They are accused of corruption – who is? International officials. I suppose that someone broke some rules, I don’t know. But definitely, it’s got nothing to do with the USA. Those officials are not US citizens. If something happened it was not in the US and it’s nothing to do with them. It’s another clear attempt by the USA to spread its jurisdiction to other states. And I have no doubt – it’s a clear attempt not to allow Mr Blatter to be re-elected as president of Fifa, which is a great violation of the operating principles of international organisations.”

Let’s look at Putin’s argument in a reversed order. So how do international organizations work? They are incorporated in the country where they are based. FIFA is incorporated in Zurich, Switzerland, as a tax-exempt “Verein”–a club or association–with few financial reporting requirements. Except that there balance sheet has a few more digits than that of the local stamp collector club. De facto, FIFA operates like a large global, post-national corporation even though its members are continental and national federations. It has become a money-making machine even though on paper it is just a non-profit club. So the legal structure within which FIFA operates is woefully inadequate for the kind of business it does.

The next question is: if FIFA really is so corrupt, and not even Putin denies this, why would the host country, Switzerland, not investigate FIFA and bring charges?  For starters, corruption per se is not a crime under Swiss law. If corruption leads to unfair competitive practices, this can be prosecuted under the Unfair Competition Act. (Ironically, the Swiss parliament currently is considering the implementation of an anti-corruption statute which actually may make a difference in the future.) This is one reason why over two dozen major international sports organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, are based in Switzerland. (Other reasons are reliable and secretive financial services, an excellent transportation infrastructure, a pleasant environment, and good shopping for their wives.) They have created a culture of collusion with Swiss authorities who are going easy on these organizations in return for them doing business in Switzerland. Switzerland sees the presence of these organizations as a source of soft power–a small state specialty the Swiss are proud of. There are cases of Swiss authorities backing off when the organization under scrutiny threatened to leave the country. In short, the Swiss authorities never would have investigated FIFA on their own, particularly as the FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, is a Swiss national.

There is a striking over-representation of small states in the Executive Committee, FIFA’s governing body. This is part of the FIFA system. The Cayman Islands, for instance, did nothing to investigate Jeffrey Webb, one of the vice presidents who now is suspended. It is not in the interest of small states to investigate its citizens who sit on important international boards and thus give their countries outsized influence. Of the seven FIFA officials arrested in Zurich this week, six represent small states. And then there is Teflon Sepp, the FIFA president, who so far miraculously has escaped prosecution. It is instructive, in this context, that the US has taken Chuck Blazer, its own corrupt FIFA official, out of circulation. He now is an informant for the US government.

This brings us back to the original question: what business of the U.S. is it? The indictments were brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO) of 1970. This implies that FIFA is treated as a Mafia-like criminal organization. As long as just one aspect of the crime, like wire fraud, originates in the U.S., the entire web of crimes can be prosecuted under U.S. law. This hook allows U.S. authorities to go after crimes that were largely committed abroad. The hook here is the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), a regional FIFA suborganization, that is based in Miami. Not surprisingly, most of those indicted are indeed associated with CONCACAF.

This type of aggressive extraterritorial jurisdiction is mostly seen with great suspicion and contempt in other countries as it tends to show U.S. authorities as overzealous, overbearing and overreaching–even though soccer fans would be glad to make an exception here. Over the years, such extraterritorial prosecutions often are directed against small states and its citizens. A good example is the U.S. pursuit of Nazi Gold in Switzerland in the 1990s–at a time when Swiss neutrality no longer was of use to the U.S. So the question remains if the U.S. prosecution really will be able to uproot FIFA corruption. The fact that Blatter himself was not indicted makes me think that it won’t. And the other question is how long it will take for small countries to feel trampled by this very assertive U.S. prosecution. So far, authorities in Switzerland have cooperated–hence the Zurich arrests. But it is unclear how long they will. Ironically, then, the solution may have to come from within FIFA, as Blatter himself demanded today. What Blatter can’t see is that this only has a chance of working without him as president.

Eusébio, A Life in the Shadows of the Colonial Past

Eusébio was one of the heroes of my childhood. Watching the 1966 Soccer World Cup in England on our neighbor’s black and white TV set  in Switzerland, all we wanted to see is Eusébio. Eusébio was the dominant player of that tournament, Pelé notwithstanding, and led the Portuguese squad to the third place. We admired the elegance of his play, his speed, and his superb ball control. It is because of players like him that we call soccer the beautiful game. Eusébio died on January 5, 2014.

Eusébio, whose full name was Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, retired from soccer in Portugal in 1975 to play in North America, and I did not think about him much anymore after that. Until 2012, when I took a walking tour through Mafalala, a poor slum of Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. As I walked across a gravel field, my guide told me that this is the place where Eusébio learned to play soccer and that Eusébio grew up in Mafalala. I was completely surprised–I always had thought of him as Portuguese, and the fact that he was black somehow went unnoticed during my childhood.

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Eusébio learned to play soccer on this field in Mafalala, Maputo.

Eusébio’s biography is marked by the de-facto Apartheid regime Portugal had implemented in Mozambique at the tail end of Portugal’s global empire. It lasted more than half a millennium and only ended in 1975 when Mozambique became independent from Portugal. The center of Maputo, then called Lourenço Marques, was reserved for whites only. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Portuguese built a large number of concrete highrises along stately avenues in the center of Maputo for a substantial Portuguese population–this is why it is referred to as Concrete City sometimes.

Blacks were not allowed to live there and were relegated to slums without any modern infrastructure. Mafalala was adjacent to the city center and became the focus of black intellectual life during the final decades of the colonial regime. It also was the center of resistance against white rule, and many leaders of FRELIMO, the Marxist liberation movement that seized power after independence, lived in shacks in Mafalala.

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Joaquim Chissano (b. 1939), the second president of Mozambique, used to live in the light blue house.

Eusébio moved to Lisbon in December 1960, at age 18, to play for Benfica. Sporting Lisbon, its cross-town rival, had first dibs on him as he played in their youth organization in Maputo. But Benfica outsmarted Sporting, and apparently they convinced Eusébio’s mother with a good bit of cash. Regardless the circumstances, for a kid from Mafalala to play for one of the major European clubs was a dream come true.

In Maputo, Eusébio was subjected to open racism imposed by the Portuguese colonial regime, but he was part of a majority community that gave him support. While the racism in Lisbon may have been less overt,  he had no community in Lisbon. So soccer became his community–which he worked for until the end of his life. He remained an untiring soccer ambassador for both Portugal and Benfica, his club, until his death. When Sepp Blatter, the FIFA boss, in 2011 stated that black soccer players just should shrug off racism, thus causing a scandal, Eusébio essentially agreed.

But we know that his 15 years at Benfica were tough, in spite of the huge sportive successes. Portugal then was a fascist state, ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970) and his successor Marcelo Caetano (1906-1980), until the Carnation Revolution of 1974 swept away the dictatorship–which led to the independence of all Portuguese colonies in the following year. The established society always saw Eusébio as an inferior African, and Eusébio also endured racist attitudes at Benfica. But he never talked publicly about his experience with racism–in spite of the fact that he agreed to be ambassador against racism for FIFPro, the global association of soccer players.

His pay at Benifica was far below of what top players elsewhere in Europe earned. Clubs like Inter Milan were interested in him, but Benfica demanded unreasonable amounts of money to release him. Apparently, Eusébio personally appealed to Salazar the dictator to get permission to leave. But Salazar denied the request with the justification that Eusébio belonged to the Portuguese people. Dictators are lousy at understanding irony. And by the time the regime fell, he was 35 and no longer of interest to top European teams.

Eusébio’s biography has a lot more layers of complexity than I possibly could have suspected as kid who admired him. As a victim of a brutal colonial regime, he moved to the racist “motherland” and sought his fortunes there. He never moved back to his native Mozambique where he was admired as a national hero, although he visited often.

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Street sign and informal portrait of Eusébio in Mafalala.

It appears that the issue of race was like a festering wound to him–a topic he never wanted to discuss publicly. Donald McRae in a 2006 piece in The Guardian describes Eusébio as a conflicted individual who was haunted by the ghosts of his past and struggled with issues of identity and belonging. Apartheid and the Portuguese colonial rule are gone, but their impacts on lives are real and ongoing. Eusébio is exhibit A. In its obituary, The Guardian writes: “Eusébio was the greatest African footballer in the history of the game.” While this is true, I would have never thought of it this way. The story is more complicated than that.