FIFA chiefs had knowledge that senior officials including former
president Joao Havelange had been paid bribes by the organisation's
former marketing company ISL, a court document published on Wednesday
has revealed.
The
world governing body also agreed to pay 2.5million Swiss francs
(£1.64m) in compensation - but only on the condition that criminal
proceedings against Havelange and executive committee member Ricardo
Teixeira were dropped.
The publication of the report by the prosecutor's office of the Swiss
canton of Zug suggests that current FIFA president Sepp Blatter would
have been aware of at least one bribe paid to Havelange.
FIFA have published the report on their website, but it leaves big
question marks about why no action was ever taken against Havelange or
Teixeira, and why the organisation went to such lengths to protect the
two senior figures.
The report states: "The finding that FIFA had knowledge of the bribery payments to persons within its organs is not questioned.
"This is firstly because various members of the executive committee had
received money, and furthermore, among other things, it was confirmed by
the former chief financial officer of FIFA as a witness that a certain
payment made to Joao Havelange... amounting to CHF1m was mistakenly
directly transferred to a FIFA account; not only the CFO had knowledge
of this, but also, among others, P1 would also have known about it."
The person referred to in the report as P1 is not identified, but it
also states that P1 and Havelange had signed the marketing agreement
with ISL on behalf of FIFA in 1997. It is known that the agreement was
signed by Havelange, who was president, and Blatter who was then general
secretary.
The documents state Havelange was paid at least CHF1.5m (£1m), Teixeira
at least CHF12.74m (£8.37m) and the pair may have received as much as
CHF21.9m (£14.4m).
The two men have dominated Brazilian football between them for the last
50 years. Teixeira at one time was Havelange's son-in-law and only
stepped down earlier this year from FIFA's executive committee and as
head of Brazil's 2014 World Cup organising committee after it became
apparent the report would be published.
Teixeira and Havelange also tried to block the publication by going to the Swiss federal court but failed to do so.
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