FIFA President Sepp Blatter was profiled on ESPN’s “E:60” Tuesday night, with ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap saying the broadcast attempted to “show how, despite innumerable controversies, despite constant scandal, he has managed for so long to maintain his grip on power.” All of FIFA's "power and prestige derives from one, simple fact: It owns and operates the FIFA World Cup, the most lucrative, most popular event of any kind on planet Earth.” If there is a “single, defining moment of Sepp Blatter’s presidency,” it was when Qatar was awarded the ’22 World Cup. Five years later, that decision "still mystifies." Phaedra Almajid, who worked for the Qatar '22 bid committee, said during a meeting in Angola that included FIFA Exec Committee members who controlled votes to decide the ’22 World Cup bid, she “witnessed the Qatari team offering to different” Exec Committee members $1.5M “in exchange for their vote." Almajid: "I was there in the room.” After the allegations became public, Blatter did not meet with her because, as she explained, it "goes back to the fact he lives in his own little world of denial.” Former FIFA Head of Competition and Blatter advisor Guido Tognoni said, “What happens in FIFA -- the corruption, the nepotism, the waste of money and all this -- not many countries care about it. These little islands, which are not bigger than a football field -- do you believe that they care what is happening in FIFA with a scandal or not? As long as they get their money, they are happy.”
REPORT THWARTED: Schaap noted while “under pressure" to explain the decisions to give the '18 and '22 World Cups to Russia and Qatar instead of England and the U.S., FIFA said it would investigate those bids, appointing former U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia “to lead the inquiry.” Schaap: “Even Garcia … found FIFA impenetrable.” Transparency Int’l Founder Michael Hershman, who was appointed in ’11 to FIFA’s newly formed independent Governance Committee, said, “I thought (Garcia) was terribly frustrated. He did not have grand jury. He did not have subpoena power. He did not have the power to grant immunity, and so he got limited cooperation.” Schaap noted FIFA has “thus far declined to make Garcia’s report public." Schaap noted the FBI has been investigating FIFA with the cooperation of a former senior American official in the organization. Sources said that with that in mind, Blatter "has decided it would be unwise to set foot on American soil” (“E:60,” ESPN, 5/12).
