Originally posted by RichC
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I bet it will be similar avalanche like what has happened when Jimmy Saville died.Go **** yourself -
it will be interesting to see how fifa survives after all the corruption is revealed when he finally goes,after all it cannot just be blatter on his own it has to be the whole thing.
who's arsed?
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How have I gone a year without knowing this film was made?
Football without Origi is nothingComment
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WTF
Qatar paid £17.17billion to host the 2022 World Cup finals.
WHERE ALL THE MONEY WENT...
Voter: Michel Platini (France) - £14.72bn
Spent on: Orders for airliners from France-based Airbus; buying PSG; setting up beIN SPORTS; and buying Ligue 1 TV rights, following a Nov 2010 meeting attended by Qatar’s Sheik Tamin, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Platini, who admits voting for Qatar and says he was encouraged but not forced to do so.
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That's enough right there to call it all off and sack the ****in lot of em!
So much for Platini being different to Blatter eh!Comment
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Arrested for reporting on Qatar's World Cup labourers.
Arrested for reporting on Qatar's World Cup labourers
By Mark Lobel BBC News, Doha .
We were invited to Qatar by the prime minister's office to see new flagship accommodation for low-paid migrant workers - but while gathering additional material for our report, we ended up being thrown into prison for doing our jobs.
Our arrest was dramatic.
We were on a quiet stretch of road in the capital, Doha, on our way to film a group of workers from Nepal.
The working and housing conditions of migrant workers constructing new buildings in Qatar ahead of the World Cup have been heavily criticised and we wanted to see them for ourselves.
Suddenly, eight white cars surrounded our vehicle and directed us on to a side road at speed.
A dozen security officers frisked us in the street, shouting at us when we tried to talk. They took away our equipment and hard drives and drove us to their headquarters.
Later, in the city's main police station, the cameraman, translator, driver and I were interrogated separately by intelligence officers. The questioning was hostile.
We were never accused of anything directly, instead they asked over and over what we had done and who we had met.Later, in the city's main police station, the cameraman, translator, driver and I were interrogated separately by intelligence officers. The questioning was hostile.
We were never accused of anything directly, instead they asked over and over what we had done and who we had met.
During a pause in proceedings, one officer whispered that I couldn't make a phone call to let people know where we were. He explained that our detention was being dealt with as a matter of national security.
An hour into my grilling, one of the interrogators brought out a paper folder of photographs which proved they had been trailing me in cars and on foot for two days since the moment I'd arrived.
I was shown pictures of myself and the team standing in the street, at a coffee shop, on board a bus and even lying next to a swimming pool with friends. It was a shock. I had never suspected I was being tailed.
At 01:00, we were taken to the local prison.
'Not Disneyland'
It was meant to be the first day of our PR tour but instead we were later handcuffed and taken to be questioned for a second time, at the department of public prosecutions.
Thirteen hours of waiting around and questioning later, one of the interrogators snapped. "This is not Disneyland," he barked. "You can't stick your camera anywhere."
It was as if he felt we were treating his country like something to be gawped at, suggesting we thought of trips to see controversial housing and working conditions as a form of entertainment.
In perfect English and with more than a touch of malice, he threatened us with another four days in prison - to teach us a lesson.
I began my second night in prison on a disgusting soiled mattress. At least we did not go hungry, as we had the previous day. One of the guards took pity on us and sent out for roast chicken with rice.
In the early hours of the next morning, just as suddenly as we were arrested, we were released.
Qatar has seen an influx of migrants to build facilities for the 2022 tournament
Bizarrely, we were allowed to join the organised press trip for which we had come.
It was as if nothing had happened, despite the fact that our kit was still impounded, and we were banned from leaving the country.
I can only report on what has happened now that our travel ban has been lifted.
No charges were brought, but our belongings have still not been returned.
So why does Qatar welcome members of the international media while at the same time imprisoning them?
Is it a case of the left arm not knowing what the right arm is doing, or is it an internal struggle for control between modernisers and conservatives?
PR effort
Whatever the explanation, Qatar's Jekyll-and-Hyde approach to journalism has been exposed by the spotlight that has been thrown on it after winning the World Cup bid.
Other journalists and activists, including a German TV crew, have also recently been detained.
How the country handles the media, as it prepares to host one of the world's most watched sporting events, is now also becoming a concern.
Mustafa Qadri, Amnesty International's gulf migrant rights researcher, told us they could be attempts "to intimidate those who seek to expose labour abuse in Qatar".
Qatar, the world's richest country for its population size of little more than two million people, is pouring money into trying to improve its reputation for allowing poor living standards for low-skilled workers to persist.
Government inspectors have said some accommodation is substandard
Inside Qatar's squalid labour camps
A highly respected London-based PR firm, Portland Communications, now courts international journalists. On the day we left prison, it showed us spacious and comfortable villas for construction workers, with swimming pools, gyms and welfare officers.
This was part of the showcase tour of workers' accommodation, and it was organised by the prime minister's office.
Qatar's World Cup organising committee, which answers to Fifa, was helping to run the tour.
Fifa says it is now investigating what happened to us. It has issued the following statement: "Any instance relating to an apparent restriction of press freedom is of concern to Fifa and will be looked into with the seriousness it deserves."
'Open country'
Following our detention, the minister of labour agreed to talk to us on camera about how the media can cover what human rights campaigners have identified as "forced labour" within his country.
"Qatar is an open country forever, since ever," Abdullah al-Khulaifi said.
"The shortcomings that I am facing, the problems I am facing, I cannot hide. Qatar is open and now with the smartphones, everyone is a journalist," he said.
He said the negative coverage of migrant workers' conditions was wildly overblown and that much progress had been made to improve basic conditions for migrant workers.
The government has implemented a wage protection scheme. It says at least 450 companies have been banned from working in the country and more than $6m (£3.8m) of fines have been handed out to firms mistreating workers, and the number of inspectors has been doubled.
Workers are now ferried to and from work in buses, not lorries.
But change has not come easily in what one security guard privately described to me as a country with surveillance officers everywhere.
Without trade unions or a free media, bosses of large domestic and international companies have little incentive to radically improve conditions for well over a million labourers desperate for money.
Before we were detained, I met an 18-year-old mechanic, one of the 400,000 Nepalese workers there.
He said he wanted to support his older brothers because his father had died and the family was struggling financially.
He paid a recruitment agency in Nepal $600 to arrange his visa to work in Qatar and was told he would earn $300 a month.
When he arrived he was told his salary, as a labour camp cleaner for air conditioning mechanics, was in fact $165 a month. He said he has never been given a copy of the contract he signed. Worse still, he said he could not understand it as it was in English.
It's a very common trick that foreign recruitment agents play before workers even get to Qatar, and very difficult for Qatar itself to police, although it says it is trying.
This young man now finds himself at the mercy of Qatar's restrictive kafala system, which prevents workers from changing jobs for five years. Being tied to an employer in that way can leave migrant workers open to exploitation.
However, with so much money needed for rebuilding decimated parts of Nepal, there will be no shortage of future volunteers.
And as Qatar's World Cup approaches, the focus on migrant labour is only likely to increase.
Link below didn't work when i tried to check it, then the page disappeared and asked me to sign in with bbc id, so that could be the reason it doesn't work if anyone clicks it.
Last edited by Vermilion; 18-05-15, 08:58 AM.Comment
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Luis Figo pulls out of Fifa presidential race to leave two-horse race
Luis Figo has pulled out of the Fifa presidential race with a stinging broadside against Sepp Blatter and the electoral process.
After the Dutch FA president, Michael van Praag, also withdrew, as expected, Blatter is left with the Jordanian former Fifa executive committee member Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein as his only challenger.
Figo, the former world footballer of the year who, like Van Praag, launched his candidacy with a strident speech and glossy manifesto, had been frustrated by Blatter’s refusal to countenance a public debate and compared his 17-year tenure to a “dictatorship”. The Portuguese former Barcelona and Real Madrid player said that the process was “anything but an election”.
This process is a plebiscite for the delivery of absolute power to one man – something I refuse to go along with,” he said. “That is why, after a personal reflection and sharing views with two other candidates in this process, I believe that what is going to happen on May 29 in Zurich is not a normal electoral act.”
More here
Trey Nyoni: countdown to stardom-2 years1year0.5 yearsComment
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FIFA elections corrupt? Who would have ever thought that....Comment
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FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S.
FIFA, a multibillion-dollar organization that governs soccer but has been plagued by accusations of bribery for decades, had several top officials arrested early Wednesday.
FABRICE COFFRINI / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
By MATT APUZZO, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and SAM BORDEN
MAY 26, 2015
ZURICH — Swiss authorities began an extraordinary early-morning operation here Wednesday to arrest several top soccer officials and extradite them to the United States on federal corruption charges.
As leaders of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, gathered for their annual meeting, more than a dozen plain-clothed Swiss law enforcement officials arrived unannounced at the Baur au Lac hotel, an elegant five-star property with views of the Alps and Lake Zurich.
The officers went to the registration desk to get keys, then headed upstairs toward the hotel rooms.
The charges allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals, according to three law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the case. The charges include wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering, and officials said they targeted members of FIFA’s powerful executive committee, which wields enormous power and does its business largely in secret.
Jack Warner, a former FIFA vice president, is among those expected to face charges in the United States.
LUIS ACOSTA / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
The arrests were a startling blow to FIFA, a multibillion-dollar organization that governs the world’s most popular sport but has been plagued by accusations of bribery for decades.
The inquiry is also a major threat to Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s longtime president who is generally recognized as the most powerful person in sports, though he was not charged. An election, seemingly pre-ordained to give him a fifth term as president, is scheduled for Friday.
Prosecutors planned to unseal an indictment against more than 10 officials, not all of whom are in Zurich, law enforcement officials said. Among them are Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, a vice president of the executive committee; Eugenio Figueredo of Uruguay, who is also an executive committee vice president and until recently was the president of South America’s soccer association; and Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, a former member of the executive committee who has been accused of numerous ethical violations.
“We’re struck by just how long this went on for and how it touched nearly every part of what FIFA did,” said a law enforcement official. “It just seemed to permeate every element of the federation and was just their way of doing business. It seems like this corruption was institutionalized.”
Jeffrey Webb, left, the president of Concacaf, with FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, during the Concacaf U-17 championships in 2013.
ARNULFO FRANCO / ASSOCIATED PRESS
The case is the most significant yet for United States Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who took office last month. She previously served as the United States attorney in Brooklyn, where she supervised the FIFA investigation.
With more than $1.5 billion in reserves, FIFA is as much a global financial conglomerate as a sports organization. With countries around the world competing aggressively to win the bid to host the World Cup, Mr. Blatter has commanded the fealty of anyone who wanted a piece of that revenue stream. He and FIFA have weathered corruption controversies in the past, but none involved charges of federal crimes in United States court.
United States law gives the Justice Department wide authority to bring cases against foreign nationals living abroad, an authority that prosecutors have used repeatedly in international terrorism cases. Those cases can hinge on the slightest connection to the United States, like the use of an American bank or Internet service provider.
Switzerland’s treaty with the United States is unusual in that it gives Swiss authorities the power to refuse extradition for tax crimes, but on matters of general criminal law, the Swiss have agreed to turn people over for prosecution in American courts.
The case further mars the reputation of FIFA’s leader, Mr. Blatter, who has for years acted as a de facto head of state. Politicians, star players, national soccer officials and global corporations that want their brands attached to the sport have long genuflected before him.
Critics of FIFA point to the lack of transparency regarding executive salaries and resource allocations for an organization that, by its own admission, had revenue of $5.7 billion from 2011 to 2014. Policy decisions are also often taken without debate or explanation, and a small group of officials — known as the executive committee — operates with outsize power. FIFA has for years operated with little oversight and even less transparency. Alexandra Wrage, a governance consultant who once unsuccessfully attempted to help overhaul FIFA’s methods, famously labeled the organization “byzantine and impenetrable.”
Law enforcement officials said much of the inquiry involves Concacaf, one of the six regional confederations that compose FIFA. Concacaf — which stands forConfederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football — includes major countries like the United States and Mexico, and also tiny ones like Barbados and Montserrat.
Concacaf was led from 1990 to 2011 by Mr. Warner, the longtime head of Trinidad & Tobago’s federation. A key powerbroker in FIFA’s governing executive committee, Mr. Warner had been dogged by accusations of corruption. He was accused of illegally profiting from the resale of tickets to the 2006 World Cup, and of withholding the bonuses of the Trinidad players who participated in that tournament.
Mr. Warner resigned his positions in FIFA, Concacaf and his national association in 2011 amid mounting evidence that he had been part of an attempt to buy the votes of Caribbean federation officials in the 2010 FIFA presidential election. A 2013 Concacaf report also found that he had received tens of millions of dollars in misappropriated funds.
But according to the rules of FIFA at the time, Mr. Warner’s resignation led to the immediate closure of all ethics committee cases against him. “The presumption of innocence is maintained,” FIFA said in a short statement announcing his departure.
No recent incident better encapsulated FIFA’s unusual power dynamic than the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, which many observers found to be flawed from the start: the decision to award two tournaments at once, critics said, would invite vote-trading and other inducements.
Since only the 24 members of the executive committee would decide on the hosts, persuading even a few of them might be enough to swing the vote. Even before the vote took place, two committee members — Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti — were suspended after an investigation by The Sunday Times caught both men on tape asking for payments in exchange for their support. It was later revealed by England’s bid chief that four ExCo members had solicited bribes from him for their votes; one asked for $2.5 million, while another, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay, requested a knighthood.
As new accounts of bribery continued to emerge — a whistleblower who worked for the Qatar bid team claimed that several African officials were paid $1.5 million each to support Qatar — FIFA in 2012 started an investigation of the bid process. It was led by a former United States attorney, Michael J. Garcia, who spent nearly two years compiling a report. That report, however, has never been made public; instead, the top judge on the ethics committee, the German Joachim Eckert, released a summary of the report. In it, he declared that while violations of the code of ethics had occurred, they had not affected the integrity of the vote.
Within hours, Garcia had criticised Eckert’s summary as incorrect and incomplete, charging that it contained “numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts.” Nonetheless, FIFA moved quickly to embrace the report’s absolution of the bid process. Qatar World Cup officials said the review had upheld “the integrity and quality of our bid,” And Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, told reporters, “I hope we will not have talk about this again.”Comment
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Breaking news. Lets hope they get screwed.
"FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S."
The charges allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals, according to three law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the case. The charges include wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering, and officials said they targeted members of FIFA’s powerful executive committee, which wields enormous power and does its business largely in secret.
Any hope of tying in charges for manslaughter? I wish.
Last edited by DeanoUK; 27-05-15, 05:53 AM.Comment
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I also posted in original Fifa corruption thread http://www.est1892.co.uk/forums/show...t=86066&page=6
Lets hope some **** hits the fanComment
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Unfortunately Blatter isn't thought to be one of them.Comment
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Yet.Experimental music, Metropolitan foodstuffs, Mexican wrestler art, London suburbia, wry whimsy, fansy pants flim flam ladComment
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