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FIFA Boss Kicked Out By Nigerian President
According to local media the 1999 FIFA youth tournament was awash with corruption. What hasn’t been disclosed until today is that FIFA got their share. In late 1998 they sent a ‘fact finding’ mission to Nigeria.
I was tipped off that as they left Nigeria their hosts pressed bundles of money on them. I’d heard that a number of junior blazers, including press spokesman Markus Siegler trousered $30,000 apiece.
Not true, squeaked Markus. He assured me that he and the other bag carriers had only got $10,000 and they’d donated it to charity. The delegation was led by FIFA chiefs Jack Warner from Trinidad and African football boss Issa Hayatou. What had they got? Markus said he didn’t know. Last week I emailed questions to Warner and Hayatou. They haven’t replied.
The Nigerian media claims millions vanished from Nigeria’s next big-ticket sports budget; the 2003 All-African Games. Amos Adamu was in charge and reporters say there’s never been a final audited set of accounts. One veteran recalled last week, ‘it was an event that delivered more medals in fraud than sport!’
Asked about that budget, Adamu emailed to me, ‘I would like you to see the audited books.’ But a Government spokesman said there had been an investigation following public complaints and he wasn’t aware that a final audit had been approved.
Nigerian civil servants are not permitted to have foreign bank accounts. But every member of FIFA’s ExCo has one in Zurich, managed by officials. Into it goes their $100,000 a year fees plus the $500 a day they get every time they leave home. That’s topped up with generous expenses. Members don’t have to produce receipts; they whack in whatever sum they can think of - and Blatter authorises payment.
Some members are reluctant to tell their own tax inspectors about this secret income. Some withdraw the money in cash and ship it home, tucked in their girlfriends’ knickers.
Has Dr Adamu told his taxman back in Nigeria? I emailed him a short list of questions – 254 words. Hours later Adamu replied with 368 words telling me he couldn’t reply for another 10 days because he wasn’t at home. In fact he was in Zurich for the World Player of the Year awards. I emailed him a second time about the FIFA money but he’s not responded.
There’re also concerns about who paid for Adamu’s bundle of World Cup tickets in 2006. Did he pay? FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren revealed, ‘we do not consider it an irregularity that the FA of the country that the association official is from pays for his tickets as this is a common procedure with other associations.’ Dr Adamu is adamant he paid for his tickets.
When Adamu joined FIFA’s elite powerbrokers in 2006 a cheeky BBC reporter in Lagos asked him, ‘How will you convince a sceptical public that you didn’t bribe your way onto FIFA?”
Magisterially, Adamu responded, ‘Corrupt people go to jail, not FIFA.’ He added, ‘FIFA does not condone corruption.’
Adamu says he’s too busy to answer
Nigerian football? It’s more crooked than you feared. A report by one of Nigeria’s many gifted sportswriters.
Sunday Herald, 18 January 2009 -
The murky methods of Fifa's man in Nigeria