The Ball Is Round. It's The Game That's Bent.

The BBC has vigorous defended their right to broadcast a documentary which alleges that three FIFA officials took bribes in the 1990s. As reported yesterday, Nicolas Leoz, Issa Hayatou and Ricardo Teixeira allegedly took the money from a sport marketing firm which was subsequently awarded lucrative World Cup rights, Panorama claimed in Monday night's programme. The BBC investigation was shown three days before a vote to decide the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, a vote that all three men will have a vote in. BBC executive editor Clive Edwards said that it was Panorama's job 'to investigate corruption and wrongdoing.' The International Olympic Committee has asked the BBC to hand over any evidence it has relating to the claims made against Hayatou, who is also a long-standing member of the IOC. The alleged bribes are included in a confidential document listing one hundred and seventy five payments totalling about one hundred million dollars. The three men did not respond to Panorama over the allegations, not even to say 'we deny these allegations,' which some may consider curious. FIFA, world football's governing body, also declined interview requests to address the allegations. However, in a statement issued on Tuesday, it said the case was 'definitely closed' as the allegations had already been investigated in Switzerland, with no FIFA officials being convicted. This, despite FIFA having what they publicly describe as 'a zero tolerance policy [against] all violations of standards.' In its programme, Panorama reported on evidence a fourth senior FIFA executive - vice-president Jack Warner - continues to be involved in the resale of World Cup tickets to touts as recently as this summer. The BBC stood by its decision to air the allegations ahead of Thursday's vote in Zurich. Clive Edwards told Radio 4's Today programme that Panorama had received a list showing the alleged payment of bribes in October, and had spent the intervening time checking the claims and putting them to those named. Edwards added Panorama presented its evidence to FIFA on 10 November. 'Some people have said that it would have been better to do it after the vote but it is surely nonsense to suggest that you know a process could be flawed and you don't say anything until after it has happened,' Edwards said. 'I am not prepared to sit on information we have. I believe that it is in everyone's interest that there should be a fair process and that corruption should be exposed.' The BBC has been criticised by the English Football Association, of course. A statement from the FA described the investigation as 'an embarrassment to the BBC. We stand by our previous position that the BBC's Panorama did nothing more than rake over a series of historical allegations none of which are relevant to the current bidding process. The 2018 team are entirely focused on winning the bid for England.' They forgot to add, seemingly, 'by any means necessary, and we don't care who we have to sleep with to achieve this.' But Michel Platini, president of football's European governing body UEFA, said that the Panorama programme should not affect England's bid to hold the World Cup. Speaking to reporters after the documentary aired, he said: 'I don't think this programme will have an effect, no - but I think what may affect the decision is the atmosphere going back a long time and what people have been writing about FIFA in the British press for many years.' The alleged bribes to the three members of FIFA's executive committee were paid by sports marketing company International Sport and Leisure and date from 1989 to 1999, Panorama reports. The company collapsed in 2001. FIFA granted ISL exclusive rights to market World Cup tournaments to some of the world's biggest brands and ISL received millions more from negotiating television broadcast rights. Some details of the alleged bribes emerged in 2008, when six ISL managers were accused of misusing company money. Bribery was not a criminal offence in Switzerland at the time the money was allegedly paid out, although is was against FIFA's ethics code. But Panorama has obtained a confidential ISL document which lists one hundred and seventy five secret payments. The ISL list shows a front company in Liechtenstein called Sanud received twenty one payments totalling nine and a half million dollars. Teixeira was closely linked to Sanud by an inquiry of the Brazilian senate in 2001. It found that funds from Sanud had been secretly channelled to Teixeira through one of his companies. FIFA president Sepp Blatter said in a statement that the 2008 court case had largely exonerated the former ISL officials. Largely, being the operative word. He added: 'It is important to stress that no FIFA officials were accused of any criminal offence in these proceedings.' And, indeed, nobody is accusing them of that now. Merely, of doing things contrary to FIFA's own ethics code. You know, the one they have a zero tolerance of? Allegedly. The recipients of most of the money paid by ISL into accounts in Liechtenstein cannot be traced. These latest allegations of wrongdoing by FIFA executive members come after two of the twenty four committee members were banned last month from voting in Thursday's ballot. The bans came after the Sunday Times - in a brilliant bit of journalism - accused Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii of being willing to sell their World Cup votes. Panorama also says that it has seen e-mails and an invoice which show Warner was involved in the procurement of eighty four thousand dollars worth of 2010 World Cup tickets. The e-mail trail suggests that the tickets were destined for the black market but the planned deal - including thirty eight tickets for the final in Johannesburg - collapsed because the touts were not prepared to pay the asking price. In 2006, Panorama revealed that Warner had sold tickets on the black market for that year's World Cup tournament in Germany. FIFA subsequently ordered Warner's family business, Simpaul Travel, to make a one million dollar donation to charity to 'compensate for the profits it had made through resale of 2006 FIFA World Cup tickets.' Asked to respond to Panorama's allegations by the Press Association news agency, Warner said he had 'no interest in this matter ... now or ever.' And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a man that David Cameron - your prime minister - is going to meet this week, shake hands with and then, presumably, get down on his hands and knees and, quite literally, beg to vote for England's bid for 2018. What, exactly, that says about Cameron's own credibility, I'll leave up to the individual reader to decide. Although I'm sure some of you would like, as I would, an explanation from the prime minister of this country as to since when has investigating - and potentially uncovering - multi-million pound corruption been 'embarrassing?' Is the prime minister going to tell the CPS to add crimes like that to all the others that they don't think are worth investigating? England will almost certainly lose the 2018 bid on Thursday. They would have probably lost it anyway - England aren't particularly well liked by many in FIFA due, in no small part, to decades of rather sniffy colonialist attitudes towards foreigners by the FA. But, more recently, the England bid was always a long-short because FIFA don't like the British press and it's been an even longer shot since the Scum Mail on Sunday published the details of a gossipy conversation between the bid's first chairman, Lord Triesman and some woman he knew in a restaurant which, ultimately, caused Triesman's resignation. It became an even longer-shot when the Sunday Times exposed the nefarious skulduggery surrounding Adamu and Temarii six weeks ago. In the last few days, however, all of that has been quietly forgotten by, and you'll like the irony here, people like the Scum Mail on Sunday's sister paper, the Daily Scum Mail, and Sky News, which shares a major shareholder, Rupert Murdoch, with the Sunday Times. These, and many other organs of the British press who've never been shy to publish anti-FIFA stories in the past, now sense the chance to pass the buck for us 'losing the bid' onto another messenger and blame a convenient scapegoat - the Beeb - should the bid fall. Which it's likely to for all sorts of reasons, a mere one of which is that FIFA, seemingly, don't like people who investigate them. I'd like the World Cup to be played in England in 2018 as much as anyone - and I include David Beckham, Prince William and David Cameron on that - but, if that means we have to bend over backwards to accommodate (alleged) bullies and (again, alleged) corrupt individuals then, personally, I reckon that's a price that isn't worth paying. Still, you never know, come Thursday FIFA might surprise us all and prove to be bigger and more transparent than they've been painted. Somehow, however, I doubt it. Once again, I'll close with the thoughts of the Telegraph's Jonathan Liew: 'For months, the England 2018 team have been furiously lobbying the BBC to scrap the programme, or at least move it to a less inflammatory time slot, ideally just before Doctors on a Friday afternoon. A bemused BBC, for its part, has been accused of "sensationalism" — which is a little spurious when you consider that Panorama is up against I'm a Celebrity on ITV — and a "lack of patriotism." The criticism is somewhat understandable, given the amount of time and effort invested in the bid: the hours spent waiting by airport baggage carousels, the interminable four-course lunches with deaf old men. For it all to come to naught as a result of half an hour of television must seem a little deflating. But all perspective has been lost. When did it become a condition of hosting a World Cup that all criticism of FIFA be suppressed? There's a term for that. It's called "bending over." Whatever happened to the idea of World Cup hosts being decided on the basis of stadiums and transport and Nelson Mandela? It's only a TV programme, for heaven's sake. If FIFA is going to form a negative view of this country as a result of a TV programme, surely that programme should be The Alan Titchmarsh Show? There's hardly a football fan in the country that wouldn't like to see the World Cup being held in England. But if it means telling our broadcasters what they can and can't show after EastEnders on a Monday night, then let someone else do it.'

Bend It Like FIFA

In 2006, the award-winning investigative journalist Andrew Jennings published a book called Foul! which - allegedly - looked into the vexed subject of allegations concerning all manner of alleged naughty shenanigans and alleged dodgy malarkey going on, allegedly, within world football's controlling body, FIFA. These included alleged million dollar bribes to secure alleged marketing rights for the company ISL (not alleged, they actually do exist) along with alleged vote-buying to secure the alleged position of alleged FIFA president Sepp Blatter and suggestions of bribery attributed to the alleged CONFACAF president Jack Warner. None of which have ever been proven in a court of law, it is important to add at this juncture. The book - and an attendant episode of the BBC's Panorama which Jennings fronted - was well-reviewed, sold in considerable numbers and, if even a quarter of its allegations are true, suggests that football is, essentially, as bent as a boomerang from the top on down. If true. Which, as noted, these allegations may not be. Although, let's put it this way, nobody has yet sued Jennings over any of the allegations which he made. So, four years on the BBC have given him another go at the subject. In Panorama: FIFA's Dirty Secrets - 8:30 BBC1, Monday - Jennings again investigates corruption allegations levelled against some of the FIFA officials who are set to vote on England's (alleged) World Cup bid, claiming to have found new evidence which supports accusations that several executives have taken bribes. Jennings also probes the existence of what are described as 'secret agreements' which could benefit FIFA financially should England succeed in their bid to host the 2018 tournament. Although, in the interests of linguistic fairness, one can rightly point out that if Jennings knows about them, then they're not really secret any more. Now, the first thing to note here is the timing: The BBC are broadcasting this documentary just a couple of days before the announcement is made on who has won the 2018 bid. Which, of course, had led to accusations of the BBC being 'unpatriotic,' by Andy Anson, the head of England's 2018 World Cup bid. And, therefore, hardly an impartial source in this matter. 'I'm incredibly disappointed with the timing of what the BBC seem to be proposing with Panorama,' he said. The BBC themselves argue that the programme, will be 'in the public interest.' And it's jolly hard to argue against that - particularly as any notions of 'patriotism' have absolutely no place in the world of investigative journalism - that's a ludicrous, risible suggestion by Mr Anson. If there has been corruption going on, and Jennings and the BBC can prove it in this programme, then they have a right - indeed many would argue a public duty - to bring such wrongdoing into light and expose it to wider scrutiny. My only slight worry is that the programme is going to end up a fudge, just like Panorama's infamous 2006 episode on the subject of transfer dealings in British football and the role of agents, Football's Dirty Secrets (note the very similar title) did. That promised much in pre-publicity in the way of specific allegations about specific transfers but, ultimately, produced very little hard evidence against any of the individuals named - or alluded to - in the programme. Although, again, it's worth recording that four years on - and despite lots of hot air being blown by the likes of that obese clown Sam Allardyce, Harry Redknapp and Kevin Bond - nobody has actually sued the BBC over anything which they alleged within the documentary. (Bond filed legal papers against the BBC, but withdrew the libel action, eight days before the trial was set to commence.) So, you know, the jury remains out on this one. Anson's accusations came on the day that FIFA released an executive summary of the various 2018 bids, which rated England as 'low risk,' a rare piece of good news for the 2018 team which has been buffeted by frequent setbacks - very few of them, of the BBC's making let it be noted. In May, Lord Triesman stepped down as England's 2018 World Cup bid chairman after reportedly accusing the Spanish and Russian football federations of conspiring in bribery in the course of a private conversation with a woman who was, secretly, taping what he said and then selling the story to the Scum Mail on Sunday. Classy. More recently England's bid suffered further damage internationally following corruption allegations made against FIFA by the Sunday Times newspaper - albeit, corruption allegations which appear to be broadly true and have led to the recent bans on at least two members of the FIFA executive committee who were caught in a sting operations, seemingly asking for money in exchange for their votes. Anson, who also criticised the Panorama programme - sight unseen - as 'sensationalist,' has been to see the BBC's director general Mark Thompson about the documentary, but the 2018 bid chief was quick to make it clear that he had not asked for the programme not to be shown. Which is good because, frankly, if he had, I'd've expected Mark Thompson to have his arse thrown out of the building and into the gutter just as I would any special interest individual who sought to tell the BBC what it can and cannot broadcast. 'I just told him what the potential implications of doing it would cause,' said Anson, who alleges that he 'knows' the contents of the letters Panorama had sent to FIFA executive committee members it had wanted to interview. 'The issues seem to be things dealt with by the Swiss courts and by FIFA in the past. They're not happy with someone raking over old issues but then, no one would be.' No, indeed. Particularly not if there is any actual criminality involved, mate. Bank robbers seldom seem to enjoy the police 'raking over old issues' either, I've noticed. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Quite the opposite, in fact. 'Maybe we're overreacting. I'm hoping it's an uninteresting and uninspiring programme.' Actually, I think most viewers will, rather, be hoping the opposite. Asked whether Panorama is looking at how much England's bid will cost, Anson replied: 'The time to look at that was when we chose the host cities. If they really cared about that, the time to do it was then, not with two days to go before the vote.' Which, I have to say is something that I do agree with. I think the timing of the programme, rather than the contents, is what's most at issue here. Anson also insisted that he would not want the government to intervene over the Panorama broadcast given the BBC is publicly funded. Not that they could, the government (of any political persuasion) has absolutely no authority - morally or legally - to tell the BBC what it can and can't broadcast and any suggestion that it ever should, under any circumstances, is an outrage that needs to be slapped down damned hard from a height with much righteous indignation. The BBC belongs to the licence fee payers, not to the government. 'It is not up to the government to stop the programme,' Anson added, quickly, perhaps realising he was on the verge of going too far. 'The government has been unbelievably supportive of the bid. We have a free media in this country and the BBC can do what they want, I just have to make sure they understand my view of what they are doing.' Former FA chief executive Mark Palios told BBC 5Live: 'It's naive to think people will not be affected by this. It's a small vote - there's only twenty two people - so one or two votes may make all the difference.' Anson, however, remains upbeat about his bid's chances of success and maintains that England have not lost a single vote during the past month. In which case, one has to wonder what all the fuss is about? Dare say we'll find out on 2 December one way or another.

David Cameron, meanwhile, says that he is 'frustrated' at the timing of a Panorama probe into FIFA, but said that it will not affect England's 2018 World Cup bid. The BBC programme investigating world football's governing body will be broadcast on 29 November - three days before the vote on 2 December in Zurich. 'Is it frustrating that Panorama's doing this programme a few days before? Of course it is,' Cameron told the BBC. 'But it's a free country. I think FIFA will understand.' This statement, from the thoroughly odious Warner, would appear to suggest otherwise and that he - at least - has already made his mind up who he's voting for. And who the rest of CONFACAF is going with, for that matter. England 2018 bid chief executive Andy Anson as mentioned previously had, ridiculously, accused the BBC of being 'unpatriotic' in airing the programme so soon before the vote as though the concept of patriotism is, in any way, a factor in the exposing of alleged wrongdoing; which is what Panorama claim they have evidence of. With a recent Sunday Times investigation into world football's governing body also resulting in two FIFA officials being banned while four others were suspended, the British media were feared, by some, to be 'harming' England's hopes. Although if the allegations about some of FIFA's top brass are true and can be proven then the question of whether the Prime Minister of this country should be quite so keen to hang out with them and lick their collective chuffs in an effort to get them to award this country the tournament is something which, I dare say, a few parliamentary voters might have something to say about in four years time. Be careful what you wish for, David, baby, it might just come true. Cameron, for example, has been photographed during this process happily shaking hands with Sepp Blatter. If, as Andrew Jennings suggests in Foul! Blatter really is as bent as a nine pound note, and if the BBC can prove that - all very big 'ifs' admittedly - then what, exactly, does that say about David Cameron's own credability? Panorama defended its decision to broadcast the programme as being in the 'public interest.' A BBC spokesperson stated: 'Panorama has a reputation for strong, independent and probing investigative journalism. The findings of the Panorama investigation into FIFA will be in the public interest.' And Cameron was keen to emphasise the positives of the British media. 'I think we also have to try and convince them [FIFA], yes we've got a robust and independent media, but our media love football and when it comes to the World Cup,' added Cameron who will be part of a thirty-man delegation in Zurich next week trying to win votes. 'In terms of audience, in terms of the press coverage around the world, actually the media will give it a fantastic boost here in this country.'