Qatar "secretly offered" $400M to FIFA just 21 days before the governing body "controversially decided" that the '22 World Cup would be held in the country, according to Calvert & Arbuthnott of the LONDON TIMES. Execs from the Qatari state-run broadcaster Al Jazeera "signed a television contract making the huge offer as the bidding campaigns to host the World Cup were reaching a climax." The contract included an "unprecedented success fee" of $100M that "would be paid into a designated FIFA account only if Qatar was successful in the World Cup ballot" in '10. Al Jazeera was "owned and controlled by Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who was the driving force behind the bid." There was also a "second secret television rights contract" for a further $480M that was "offered by Qatar three years later -- shortly before FIFA cut short its long-running investigation into corruption in the bidding process and suppressed its findings." The $400M offer ahead of the vote was a "clear breach of FIFA's own anti-bribery rules." FIFA is "set to receive" a multimillion-dollar payment including a portion of the $100M success fee next month under the contract's terms. Such large TV-rights deals are "normally signed off by FIFA's executive committee (Exco)." On the eve of the vote, then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter "told Exco members that they would be given an extraordinary bonus of $200,000 each because that year's World Cup had been a financial success" (LONDON TIMES, 3/10).
