Blatter & Havelange named in Swiss
bribes trial
Back in 1995 the mighty IMG group promised FIFA they would top any offer from any company for World Cup television and marketing rights. Their starting price was $1 billion and there wasn’t a ceiling. They were given the bum’s rush and wrote angrily to Blatter, then FIFA general secretary, that ‘preferential treatment [is] being given to other parties such as ISL’ and that the bidding was merely ‘a cosmetic exercise.’
ISL got the rights.
After ISL went bust the liquidator found documents that pointed to some FIFA officials filling their boots. He agreed a deal with Jean-Marie, represented on this one occasion by the Zurich lawyer who most often represents Blatter to set up an account to repay a little over £1 million. The foreword to the agreement says, ‘Mr Weber wishes that the recipients of the money paid by ISL who are directly or indirectly involved in football business will not be asked to repay any further money.’
You scream, I scream, we all scream who were ‘the recipients?’ Bluntly – did Blatter take bribes or are his denials to be believed?
The Six disperse, much smaller men now. Their legal strategy has collapsed. Next time they attended the Zug court, they’d be wise to bring their toothbrushes. The confident line they’d borrowed from too many old movies, ‘Do yer worst copper, you’ve got nothing on me, you’ll have to let me go’ had offended the judges. Only Malms seemed to have remembered that Carole and her chums had the power put them behind doors without keys for several Christmases.