All of FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s men "are now banned, arrested or indicted," according to Martyn Ziegler of the LONDON TIMES. But Blatter, the "pantomime villain of world football" and the subject of an eight-year ban plus twin criminal investigations over activities at the helm of the game’s world governing body, said that the future "holds no fears for him." Blatter said, "I am sure that there is justice in this world, and that I have committed nothing which goes to criminal law. I have killed nobody, I have not robbed a bank, I have not taken any money from anywhere and I was even treating well all my ex-girlfriends. It’s true. They defend me." For someone with "two swords of Damocles, separately wielded" by the U.S. and Swiss prosecutors, hanging over him, Blatter "appears a hugely revived figure from the frail, unshaven pensioner who made a rambling appearance at a news conference four days before Christmas" after his FIFA ethics committee ban had been announced. Blatter spoke "in detail" about the allegations at the center of the investigations. The investigations focus on "three areas of alleged corruption or mismanagement:" the U.S. justice department says that a $10M World Cup bribe was paid to Jack Warner, the "disgraced Caribbean football official," by South Africa using a FIFA bank account. The Swiss prosecutors are looking at the underselling of World Cup TV rights to Warner, who made an £11M profit, and a payment of 2M Swiss francs made by FIFA to UEFA President Michel Platini in '11 "on the basis of an oral agreement made 11 years previously." Blatter says that he knew nothing of the $10M payment to Warner. He said, "There are so many operations in the finances and if they don’t inform me directly I’m not going to have a look at everything." Blatter’s 17 years in office "were dogged by scandal from the start," but perhaps FIFA’s troubles "really began" on Dec. 2, 2010 when he opened the envelope with the word "Qatar" inside. Platini’s involvement "was key -- the Frenchman has always denied being pressured to vote for Qatar by Nicolas Sarkozy, the then French president," but Blatter said that Platini telephoned him to "explain what had happened after a dinner at the Élysée Palace" in late '10. Blatter added, "You cannot buy a World Cup, it will go at the end where the higher political influences are. For World Cup 2022, Platini at least had the courtesy to phone me and say, ‘Now we have had a meeting with the head of state and if the head of state is asking me to support France for different reasons then I will.' He was very correct, he phoned me and said my vote will not be for the Americans. ... I knew then there would be a problem, we tried but it was too late. It was one week or 10 days before the vote. I tried to see what votes were left for the U.S. but four votes were lost." Blatter said that he had "wanted to give the World Cup to the two superpowers:" Russia, which won the '18 vote, and the U.S., which lost out to Qatar for '22 (LONDON TIMES, 2/20). REUTERS' Geert De Clercq reported Blatter said he "will not support any of the five candidates standing to succeed him as FIFA president," though "all but one of them had spoken to him about their bids." Blatter: "Four of the five candidates have spoken to me. I cannot take sides, that is not possible." He said that several national federations "had asked him who they should vote for, but he told them to vote as they saw fit" (REUTERS, 2/18).
