The thing about corruption is that it is, all too often, invisible. Invisible to outside eyes, invisible to investigators, invisible too, to those on the make. Look back on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) scandals and you will see a group of people who thought — really thought — that they were doing nothing wrong. Those benefiting from corruption couldn’t see the bribes: they just saw gifts. They couldn’t see kickbacks: they just saw the fringe benefits of a tough job.
It is remarkable to consider that, as early as 1991, well before the Salt Lake City scandal brought down the curtain on the corruption that had grown throughout the term of Juan Antonio Samaranch as president, members were lavished with so many gifts from cities bidding for the 1998 Winter Olympics that the IOC had to set up a parcel post station in the Hyatt Regency Hotel to help the delegates to send them home.
Yet, even then, the beneficiaries couldn’t see anything unethical. As Robert Helmick, a former US Olympic committee president, would later say: “You’re treated like royalty, with limousines, wining and dining, a hotel suite. My wife would be afraid to go out on shopping trips. She found if she said she liked something, the next day it would show up in her room. Pearl brooches, five-ring pendants. Nothing is done to discourage it. You start thinking you deserve this. You have a group of good people caught up in a system that has become corrupt.”
This quote is worth reflecting upon as we look forward to the election of a new Fifa president. The first thing to note is that the incumbent still cannot see a problem, despite the arrests and multiple investigations. Only last week Sepp Blatter offered the view that “Fifa isn’t corrupt”. But that’s the thing: when you are embedded within a network of deceit for long enough, you no longer notice it. It becomes normalised, the moral boundaries blur. I suspect that if Blatter took a lie-detector test as to whether Fifa is clean, he would sail through it.
And that takes us to his likely successor. I happen to believe Michel Platini, too, when he says that his conscience is clear in voting for Qatar 2022. He genuinely believes that he voted for a micro-state with summer temperatures of almost 50C, which the Fifa technical committee declared was “high risk” and which pundits declared could lead to countless deaths among immigrant construction workers, on merit. It was an objective choice based on a thorough examination of the issues.
Advertisement
But it is also worth noting that a month before the vote, Platini met, at the Élysée Palace, Nicolas Sarkozy, then the French President, Sheikh bin Hamad al-Thani, the Crown Prince of Qatar (now the Emir) and Sébastien Bazin, of Colony Capital, owner of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). In the aftermath, Qatar purchased an ailing PSG (the club supported by Sarkozy) and poured millions into its coffers. Qatar also wrote a cheque to finance some of the poorest suburbs of Paris and Al Jazeera purchased the TV rights to the French league at an increased price. Oh, and Laurent Platini, son of Michel, secured a lucrative job at Burrda Sport, a clothing company owned by Qatar.
Platini, the Uefa president, has strenuously denied that the meeting with Sarkozy, the investment in PSG or any of the other strands of this complex web had anything to do with his fateful decision to vote for Qatar 2022.
He made that decision on the basis of what was best for football. He also points out that his son is qualified to do the job at Burrda and that he secured the gig, like Qatar winning 2022, on merit. Laurent, for his part, has returned the compliment, arguing that his father is a man of integrity who always acts with the purest of motives. And here’s the thing: I believe them both.
Let us widen the perspective for a moment. A famous study of doctors taken by a pharmaceutical company on an all-expenses-paid trip found that the rate at which they prescribed the company’s medication almost tripled in the aftermath. The doctors themselves were oblivious to this bias; indeed, they were indignant. “We came into healthcare to heal people. Are you seriously saying we would compromise our integrity for the sake of a trip to a hotel?” they said.
They were also able to cite powerful reasons for why they were prescribing the drug, and clearly believed what they were saying. But isn’t that how the most powerful pro quos operate: beneath the radar of self-awareness? It is about the subtle duress of covert obligation and palm-greased reciprocity.
Advertisement
When we think of corruption, we often think of envelopes stuffed with cash. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. The much deeper problem is the self-justifying stories we tell ourselves to explain why we prescribed a drug from a company that has given us lots of gifts (“the drug has good evidence on its side!”) or selected a particular nation to host a World Cup (“it’s about time the competition went to the Middle East!”). We all have latitude in the decisions that we make; corruption consists in a culture that stretches this latitude as far as it will go without anyone thinking that they have done anything wrong.
And that is where Fifa is today. There are many out-and-out crooks who would happily pocket a creased envelope of fifties. They are the people who have been fingered by The Sunday Times and may soon be convicted in various courts of law. But just as worrying, when you take a step back, is the penumbra of “honest” people who engage in subtler, but no less egregious, quid pro quos. That was the key lesson from the IOC in the 1990s too.
We should never forget that the England 2018 bid, which always described itself as beyond reproach, scheduled a lucrative friendly with Thailand in return for the vote of Worawi Makudi, their ExCo member, in direct violation of the rules; that Geoff Thompson was reported to have traded votes with other nations; that a lavish dinner was allegedly purchased for Caribbean officials to secure the support of Jack Warner.
That is why we would be foolish to suppose that the problem at Fifa is about a single person, Blatter or otherwise. It is infinitely deeper. It is about how a complex web of covert deals, alliances and pacts, many entered into by people who believe themselves to be honest, has corrupted the basic values of one of the most important administrative bodies in sport. It is a story that has culminated in the grotesque spectacle of officials leaving hotels behind bedsheets, and will end only when a new president, completely dissociated with the past, is elected. Football needs radical change, not more self-justification.
Platini is a genuinely charming man and was one of the finest footballers of his generation. I believe him when he says that he voted for Qatar because he thought that was the best choice. But that is precisely why he is the wrong man to take over at Fifa. A clean break is needed if this wonderful game is to have the governing body it deserves.