Qatar’s unintended sporting legacy: A FIFA clean-up, exposure of political corruption, and corporate sponsor rethink
By James M. Dorsey
Qatar’s 2022 World Cup is promising to be a rare example of
a mega sporting event that leaves a legacy of social, political and economic
change – but not in the way the Gulf state’s ruling family had imagined.
Controversy about Qatar’s successful bid coupled with world
soccer body FIFA’s failure to seriously tackle corruption in soccer governance
in its own house as well as its regional federations, prominent among which the
Asian Football Confederation (AFC), led to this week’s unveiling of indictments
against 14 senior current and past soccer FIFA executives and sports
businessmen.
The scandal goes to the heart of not only financial
corruption but also the enabling environment of political corruption rooted in
the political sway of political forces often aligned with autocratic
governments like those of the Middle East within FIFA, the AFC and the Olympic
Council of Asia.
The scandal is compounded by mounting criticism of Qatar’s
controversial labour regime and the Gulf state’s failure to so far make good on
lofty reform promises. That has not only prompted global corporations who
sponsor FIFA to speak out but also sparked discussion on the ethical responsibility
of corporate sponsors embarrassed by what crusading journalist Andrew Jennings
termed a criminal organization.
Given resistance to change within FIFA as well as several
regional soccer bodies like the AFC, only three stakeholders had the potential
of shaking soccer governance’s tree: the judiciary, fans and corporate
sponsors. Prosecutors in the US and Switzerland took the lead this week.
The US Department of Justice had a legal base with the
presence on US soil of the Miami-based Confederation of North, Central America
and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) – virtually all those indicted
hail from the Americas --, the involvement of a prominent US national, the fact
that potentially illicit US dollar payments were processed through US banks,
and the legislative and judicial infrastructure capable of taking on a global
investigation.
By contrast, fans with the exception of a few demonstrations
and statements primarily in Britain and Scotland were largely apathetic to what
was a far-from-my-bed show in the stratosphere of soccer while corporate
sponsors also took a lead in recent weeks with sharp statements criticising
controversial labour conditions in Qatar.
The corporates were joined this week by former and present
international players who in a letter demanded that Qatar abolish its
controversial kafala system or sponsorship system that puts workers at the
mercy of their employers. The letter asserted that those working on the 2022
World Cup were being “held hostage on the world’s biggest building site”
The combination of legal action in the United States and
Switzerland coupled with corporate unrest should give Qatar reason for concern.
The threat to Qatar’s retaining its hosting rights is multi-fold and has
increased substantially with the legal proceedings. The legal proceedings also
threaten with the focus on sports rights companies to shine a spotlight on companies’
cosy commercial relationships with soccer governance bodies that various
regional federations, first and foremost among which the AFC, have sought to
maintain at whatever cost.
While the US investigation appears to be initial focused on
events in the Americas and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, it is also
looking at the 2011 FIFA presidential election that sparked the downfall
of Mr. Bin Hammam. That election is closely tied to the Qatari bid and
together with the FIFA vote in favour of Russia, the focus of the Swiss
criminal proceedings.
Former FIFA executive committee Chuck Blazer, who has
already pleaded guilty and is cooperating with US authorities, played an
important role in bringing down Mr. Bin Hammam. Mr. Blazer allegedly sat next
to Mr. Bin Hammam during the December 2, 2010 FIFA executive committee meeting
that voted in favour of Qatar and watched the Qatari tick off a list of
names of those voting for the Gulf state. The assertion was that Mr. Bin
Hammam's list included the names of those whom he had bought.
Similarly, the sons of disgraced soccer executive, Jack Warner, Darry
and Daryan Warner a former FIFA executive committee member and Bin Hammam
associate, have followed Mr. Blazer in working with US authorities. Jack
Warner, one of the 14 indicted executives, turned himself in to police in
Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday night local time.
Mr. Warner was instrumental in Mr. Bin Hammam's campaigns
for both the Qatar World Cup and the FIFA presidency. Mr. Warner resigned from
FIFA in 2011 to avoid legal proceedings by the soccer body. Mr. Warner warned
at the time that he would bring the house down on FIFA after he released an
email from FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke asserting that the Qatar World
Cup had been bought.
While the US and Swiss proceedings focus on
financial corruption, they are unlikely to tackle the equally serious problem
of political corruption resulting from the close association of soccer and
political corruption that often served as an enabler for illicit financial
dealings and are at the heart of FIFA’s Qatar and Russia-related scandals, the
Bin Hammam affair and the AFC scandals the group is seeking to suppress.
This blog together with the Malay Mail sparked the
suspension earlier this month of AFC general secretary Dato Alex Soosay pending
investigation into allegations that he attempted to have documents hidden or
destroyed related to multiple potentially illegal payments as well as the
group’s corporate dealings.
AFC president Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, a member
of the Bahraini ruling family that in 2011 brutally crushed a popular
revolt during which some 150 athletes and sports executives were arrested. They
included on Sheikh Salman's watch as head of the Bahrain Football Association
national soccer team players who were reportedly tortured. Sheikh Salman failed
to stand up for his players or address the allegations against him.
Sheikh Salman has further gone out of his way to bury an
independent audit that disclosed massive financial shenanigans within the AFC
and raised serious questions about the group's $1 billion master rights
agreement with Singapore-based World Sports Group. (WSG). WSG's legal effort to
force this author to disclose sources failed in 2014 with a damning Singapore
Supreme Court ruling against it.
The US and Swiss legal proceedings put the Qatari World Cup
bid in the spotlight. Recent revelations by The Sunday Times leave little doubt
about corruption in the Qatari bid. But to be fair, Qatar and Russia played the
game the way it is played in FIFA. England lost its 2018 World Cup bid for the
simple reason that it insisted on walking a straight and ethically and legally
correct line.
As a result, depriving Qatar of its hosting rights without
also tackling Russia and more importantly radically reforming FIFA and soccer
governance worldwide to root out a culture of financial and political
corruption would turn the Gulf state into a scapegoat. Moreover, the question
is, what is the most favourable result of the legal proceedings: uprooting a
deep-rooted culture, enabling sporting mega events to be vehicles of change or
punitive retribution?
While Qatar scrambles to counter potential fallout from the
legal proceedings, it is certain to feel pressure to act swiftly to address
concerns about the working and living conditions of workers, including those
involved in World Cup-related construction projects. Migrant workers constitute
the majority of Qatar's population.
To Qatar's credit, it stands out since winning its World Cup
hosting rights as the only Gulf state to engage with its critics in a part of
the world that incarcerates or bars entry to those who don't tow the autocrats'
line. Qatar has in recent weeks been under fire for failing to make good on
lofty promises and cracking down on its critics as well as foreign media
reporting on labour and World Cup-related issues.
Qatar’s engagement was a first step in the kind of change
the 2022 World Cup can spark. So is the fact that corporate sponsors are
rethinking what it means to grant financial support.
“What are brands Adidas, Gazprom, Hyundai, Kia, McDonald’s,
Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Visa to do over allegations of improper conduct in
working conditions at the 2022 World Cup building sites in Qatar?... A brand’s
moral compass is being tested here and whilst many brands had commented last
year, most notably Adidas who’s association with FIFA extends to 2030, issued
statements alongside Sony… As consumers we can influence and help brands
recognise and understand that as global citizens our expectation is that we’d
at least like them to demonstrate that they care and lead by example,” said
David Todaro, writing in Branding Magazine.
James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute
of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the
same title.
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