from the NYT just now.
FIFA announced Friday that three former top officials
arranged to pay themselves more than $80 million over the past five years, including promises of tens of millions of dollars in payments that were quietly approved last May only days after the indictments of a host of top FIFA executives on corruption charges.
In a statement, lawyers hired by FIFA to investigate the organization said that the three officials — the former president Sepp Blatter and his former deputies Jérôme Valcke and Markus Kattner — had mounted a “coordinated effort” to enrich themselves through a series of raises, bonuses and other payments. The three were also accused of modifying the termination clauses in their employment contracts to ensure that they would receive multimillion-dollar payouts even if they were fired for cause.
None of the men currently work for FIFA. Blatter
was banned from soccer by FIFA in December and replaced by a new president, Gianni Infantino, in an election in February. FIFA
suspended Valcke, Blatter’s longtime deputy, last fall and fired him in January amid accusations of corruption. Valcke was replaced temporarily as secretary general by FIFA’s finance director, Kattner. That effectively placed Kattner in control of FIFA’s finances in the months leading to this year’s presidential election, but Kattner, too, was fired in May after FIFA said it had discovered he had
breached his fiduciary duty to the organization.The revelations about the executives’ pay came only hours after the Swiss attorney general’s office conducted a new raid on FIFA headquarters in Zurich, and days after Infantino was embroiled in his own scandal after
a German newspaper reported that he had worked to fire FIFA’s independent auditor in a leadership power struggle.
FIFA is trying to emerge from the worst corruption scandal in its history, which began just over a year ago when more than a dozen soccer and sports marketing officials with ties to world soccer’s governing body
were arrested in predawn raids before a FIFA meeting in Zurich. Several have pleaded guilty to corruption charges in the United States, including more FIFA executives arrested in
a second Zurich raid in December.
Infantino won election as FIFA president in February, promising reforms and new leadership as the suspensions of top leaders mounted, and in closing FIFA’s annual congress in May in Mexico City he had confidently declared, “The crisis is over.” But Friday’s announcement brought a new crisis.
In a news release, FIFA and its lawyers accused Blatter, Valcke and Kattner of working together to bulk up their compensation in agreements as far back as 2007. The evidence, the lawyers from the firm Quinn Emanuel said, revealed breaches of fiduciary duty and also raised questions about FIFA’s internal financial controls, especially the role of its compensation subcommittee.
Among the accusations leveled Friday were:
■ In 2011, with Blatter in a contested election for the FIFA presidency, Valcke and Kattner were given eight-year contract extensions that included guarantees that they would receive full payment of their salaries if they lost their jobs, a likely outcome under a new president.
■ Blatter received a bonus of 12 million Swiss francs (about $12 million) — four times his annual pay — after the 2014 World Cup and was scheduled to received a similar payment for the four-year term that included the 2018 tournament.
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■ Valcke received a $10 million World Cup bonus for 2014 and was due another worth $11 million from the 2018 World Cup.
FIFA said all of the contracts would face further investigation, and it said it had shared its findings with the Swiss attorney general’s office and would do the same with the United States Department of Justice.
