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.'
'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.'
