Tag Archives: Zurich

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.

_50268468_wc_2018_announcement

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.

Islamic Extremist Iconoclasm–and Its Christian Precedents

In recent days, there has been a global outcry about the destruction of the ancient Assyrian site of Nimrud by ISIS. Over the past few years, many invaluable antiquities and irreplacable world heritage sites have fallen victim to Islamic extremists in countries like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. The theological justification for these acts is that these artifacts are idols which propagate a false religion and seduce the faithful to stray from the path to true faith.

Perhaps the most spectacular act was the the destruction of two giant Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2001. Ever since then, Islamic extremists have destroyed valuable antiquities up to the most recent atrocities committed by ISIS. Aside from expunging idols of false religions, the destruction serves a second purpose: it has become part of a propaganda war in which ISIS is shocking Western audiences in order to remain relevant. The destruction of antiquities and its documentation in videos thus serve as propaganda stunts not unlike the brutal and inhuman beheading videos.

While these are despicable acts, the fact that we infidels find these acts reprehensible is part of the reason why they were committed in first place. I decided not to link images in order not to fuel this propaganda effort by the Islamic extremists. The “propaganda video featuring the apparent destruction of the Mosul Museum” also raises the possibility that these accounts are actually exaggerated. It appears that many of the destroyed artifacts actually were plaster replicas–which reinforces the point about the propaganda stunt.

It is useful to remind ourselves that the Christian tradition had its own moments of sometimes violent iconoclasm–the theologically motivated destruction of religious artifacts. In the 8th and 9th centuries, the Byzantine Empire went through two periods of iconoclasm, for instance. But the most virulent example of Christian extremist iconoclasm is the Protestant Reform of the 16th century, promoted by Lutherans like Andreas Karlstadt and the two founding figures of the Reformed Church, Huldrych Zwingli and Jean Calvin. They regarded the visual representation of the divine as a form of heresy and ordered the systematic destruction of religious art in churches they controlled.

8108981215_17c42b9466_o

Damaged relief in Utrecht Cathedral, desecrated in 1566 during the iconoclast fury in the Netherlands. (Wikipedia)

The Protestant iconoclastic fervor was as virulent and extreme as the destructive energy displayed by the modern-day Islamic extremists.  In the Zwinglian part of Switzerland, and particularly in Zurich, churches were purged of all religious images in 1524. Wooden art was publicly burned, and stone sculptures damaged and destroyed with heavy tools. Similar purges happened in some South German cities in the following years. A wave of iconoclast riots swept through the Low Lands in 1566 as an expression of Calvinist assertion against Spanish-Catholic rule.

Destruction_of_icons_in_Zurich_1524

Removal and public burning of religious icons in Zurich in 1524. (Wikipedia)

Citizens were incited by preachers to remove idolatric religious art and to ritualistically destroy it in an act of public performance that amounts to a publicity stunt–an aspect which is reflected in many images from the period. Pre-Reformation church art had been commissioned and sponsored by prominent noble and patrician families whose members continued to identify with it. Reformers staged these acts of destruction to shock the entrenched establishment: the point was to destroy what was emotionally dear to its members. Just like with the destruction of antique treasures, there was a theatrical aspect to Reformation-era iconoclasm. So the barbaric destruction of antiquities at the hands of ISIS is not an Islamic specialty–rather an outgrowth of misguided religious fundamentalism. The examples from Christian history vividly illustrate the point.

Frans_Hogenberg_Bildersturm_1566

Destruction of religious art in the Church of Our Lady in Antwerp in 1566, staged as a communal act. (Wikipedia)

 

Racist Attitudes in Switzerland? The Tales of two African-American Women

Oprah traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, recently to attend the wedding of Tina Turner who has lived in the tony Zurich suburb of Küsnacht since 1995. Earlier this year, Turner made the headlines for accepting Swiss citizenship while simultaneously renouncing her US citizenship, presumably for tax reasons. The US has the questionable distinction of being the only industrialized country that taxes its citizens who reside abroad. (One would wish that the US would apply similar standards to US corporations, but that is a different matter.) Taxes aside, Turner seems to be genuinely at ease in Switzerland: “I’m very happy in Switzerland and I feel at home here. […] I cannot imagine a better place to live,” Turner reportedly told the Swiss tabloid Blick.

Oprah, her wedding guest, had a different story to tell to Entertainment Tonight. Oprah apparently entered the exclusive boutique Trois Pommes (which Oprah refused to identify) in downtown Zurich by herself, without any of her handlers. She asked to see a handbag with a SFr. 35,000 ($38,000) price tag. According to Oprah, the sales person replied, “No, it’s too expensive!” When Oprah further insisted on seeing that bag, the woman at the store replied, “No, no, you don’t want to see that one, you want to see this one, because that one would cost too much and you would not be able to afford that.” The employee then proceeded to show Oprah other, less expensive handbags. After three unsuccessful attempts, Oprah apparently left the store without making a scene and without pulling “the black card,” as she put it.

IMG_7241

Upscale shopping street in the historic heart of Zurich

In the interview, Oprah was clearly annoyed because her star power apparently has not reached tiny Switzerland yet: “I didn’t have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and my little sandals. But obviously The Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Zurich. So this does not happen to me unless somebody obviously does not know it is me.”

It is unfortunate that this narcissistic display of injured vanity obfuscates the matter. It has allowed commentators in Switzerland to focus on the hissy fit by a narcissistic international entertainer–as a commentary entitled “Die verletzte Narzisstin” (the injured narcissist) in the respected Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger did. This line of argumentation enables commentators to deny that there is any racism at issue in this scandal that now is referred to as “Täschligate” (handbag-gate) in Switzerland. As in the cases of the Nazi Gold and the bank secret, Switzerland again sees itself exposed to a barrage of international accusations, and the gut reaction is to circle the wagons–a posture that is common when small states see themselves exposed to massive criticism and pressure from abroad. And Oprah delivered all the arguments for this defensive posture.

This also is unfortunate because Oprah clearly has had a positive impact on young black women around the world. In a visit to South Africa some years ago, a group of young women from Limpopo province glowingly told us how Oprah is a role model for them who as a person of color and as a woman made it in a world dominated by white men.

But Oprah is right that this incident would not have happened if the sales clerk had recognized her as a celebrity. Which brings up the question why it did happen. Trudie Götz, the owner of the boutique, in an interview with the Swiss tabloid Blick framed this as a “misunderstanding” due to the imperfect command of English of her employee and claimed that her employee meant well, acted correctly and in no way displayed racial prejudices. She further stated that she sees no reason to fire her sales person. Ironically, Ms. Götz was an invited guest at the Turner wedding as well.

Trudie Goetz

Trudie Götz, owner of the upscale Trois Pommes boutique, in an interview with the tabloid Blick (screenshot Aug. 9, 2013)

If the sales clerk acted correctly by not showing a handbag to a customer deemed undeserving, business policies and practices come into focus. It is obvious that the profiling of customers in this boutique is standard procedure and that sales people are trained to profile customers–a practice that was confirmed by other upscale Zurich retailers. But what are the criteria for this profile? Obviously, the perceived ability to pay is key, and race factors into that in a major way. Furthermore, the rabid denials of racism by so many Swiss commentators imply that race indeed is a major underlying issue. Switzerland just in recent years has been forced to deal with a multi-racial society. Switzerland still lacks any authoritative mainstream voices–like Oprah–who can talk about race from a minority viewpoint. As the clumsy and insensitive commentaries in the Swiss press indicate, the Swiss have a long way to go to develop an understanding of the subtle ways of racism in our globalized world.

In the meantime, Switzerland Tourism, Switzerland’s official tourism office, showed outrage over the scandal, apparently fearing damage to its brand. International tourism in Switzerland has been in decline over the past few years, and the perception is that this scandal is not helpful. Daniela Bär, the spokesperson for Switzerland Tourism, offered a speedy apology to Oprah, reducing the issue to a clumsy salesperson who acted inappropriately. This also seems to be the view of other retailers in Zurich–again denying any systemic issues this scandal seems to have revealed. It is evident that Switzerland Tourism and other commercial interests would like the world to see Switzerland through Tina Turner’s eyes rather than Oprah Winfrey’s.

 

Note: see my later post, published on August 13, 2013, entitled Oprah Creates a Stir: Switzerland’s Small-State Response