IN THE afterglow of his re-election for a fifth term as president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter posed the question himself: “Why would I step down? That would mean I recognise I did wrong.” Four days later, on June 2nd, the 79-year-old Swiss who has run football’s governing body for 17 years announced his resignation, which will take effect when a successor is chosen at a special congress by March 2016.
Accounts differ as to why Mr Blatter decided to call time on his 40-year stint at FIFA. One likely explanation is that he had been warned that investigations into corruption at FIFA by the FBI and Swiss prosecutors were already lapping at the door of his Zurich office and that his lawyers advised him that he would be in a better position to fight charges, should they come, if he were to resign.
Mr Blatter will have been disturbed by reports the day before that American investigators were linking his deputy, Jérôme Valcke, to payments worth $10m in 2008 to people including Jack Warner—the disgraced and now-indicted former head of CONCACAF, the governing body of football in North and Central America and the Caribbean. The payments are alleged to...
from The Economist: International http://ift.tt/1M7QQrh
No comments:
Post a Comment