Scandal must be over before election – Blatter

Jack Warner

MANCHESTER, (Reuters) – FIFA president Sepp Blatter  wants the vote-selling scandal which has damaged attempts by  world soccer’s governing body to clean up its image to be sorted  out by the time he stands for re-election on June 1.

Sepp Blatter

Former English FA chairman David Triesman has accused FIFA  executive committee members Ricardo Teixeira, Jack Warner,  Nicolas Leoz and Worawi Makudi of wanting incentives to vote for  England’s ultimately unsuccessful 2018 World Cup bid.

“Let’s take some time to do it but we have to do it very  fast, because we have a congress to come and we have to deal  with this matter before the congress,” Blatter told Al Jazeera  on Wednesday.

“We cannot just say to kick it out of the mind of FIFA and  we will deal after…  No, we have to do it now, immediately, we  have exactly three weeks to do so, so we must accelerate the  movement in the good or in the bad.”

FIFA wrote to the FA on Wednesday asking it to provide  evidence to back up Triesman’s statements, made at the previous  day’s British parliamentary inquiry into why the bid failed.     Committee members sought to clear their names over  allegations that have stunned Blatter three weeks before the man  who has vowed to “clean FIFA” is due to stand against Qatari  Mohamed Bin Hammam for soccer’s top job.

The vote will be taken at the FIFA Congress in Zurich, by  which time Blatter hopes to have got to the bottom of the latest  corruption issue to hit his organisation.

A total of eight of FIFA’s 24-strong key-decision making  executive committee have now been accused by the British media  and British parliamentary representatives of corruption,  including two banned by FIFA last year over reports of  vote-selling.

Blatter has distanced himself from executive committee  members saying he does not choose them and that FIFA would react  immediately against anyone in breach of the ethics code rules.


‘PURE INVENTION’

Those named at the inquiry have denied Triesman’s charges.

In an interview with Trinidadian newspaper Newsday, Warner  said: “First of all, I laugh like hell because it took those  guys from December to now (to know) that I have 2.5 million  pounds ($4.12 million) I believe. I never asked anybody for  anything.”

Jack Warner

Triesman had accused Warner of asking for money to be  “channelled through me” for an education centre in his home  country Trinidad and Tobago. Warner said he had shown English FA  officials a potential site but nothing had ever progressed.

Thai FA president Makudi joined Warner in denying asking for  bribes, saying Triesman’s claim that he had wanted television  rights for a proposed Thailand v England friendly was untrue.

“I have never discussed with Lord Triesman the issue of TV  rights. If the match takes place, FIFA regulations will apply,”  Makudi told Reuters by telephone. The FA scrapped plans for the  match in the end. South America’s Conmebol president Leoz has declined to  comment on Triesman’s claim that he had requested a knighthood  in return for his vote, while Brazil’s CBF chief Teixeira is  starting legal proceedings against Triesman.

The 2018 bid was not the only one embroiled in corruption  charges as Members of Parliament involved in the inquiry also  revealed the names of two other FIFA executive committee members  accused of being paid to vote for Qatar’s successful 2022 bid.

FIFA vice-president Issa Hayatou of Cameroon and Jacques  Anouma of Ivory Coast were accused of being paid $1.5 million to  vote for Qatar, a charge “categorically denied” by Confederation  of African Football (CAF) president Hayatou on Wednesday.

“The president of CAF said all these accusations brought  against him are pure invention and an attempt to discredit him,”  CAF said on its website (www.cafonline.com), referring to  allegations which came from evidence submitted to the inquiry by  the Sunday Times newspaper.