Bribery investigation: FIFA denies Valcke approved $10m payment

World governing body says secretary general is in the clear

ZURICH: FIFA on Tuesday admitted that it had processed a $10 million payment from South Africa to a disgraced football official but denied that the world body’s secretary general Jerome Valcke was involved.

FIFA said that a former finance committee chief who died last year, Argentine Julio Grondona, authorised the payment which went to Jack Warner.

Warner, one of 14 people facing corruption charges in the US over $150 million in bribes, was at the time Grondona’s deputy as head of FIFA’s finance committee.

The South African government asked FIFA to “withhold” money intended for the organisers of the 2010 World Cup and send it to a development project in the Caribbean run by Warner, said a FIFA statement.

According to US investigators, the $10 million was a bribe promised to Warner and his deputy Chuck Blazer to secure the 2010 World Cup. South Africa has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

The FIFA statement came in response to a New York Times report that Valcke, right-hand man to FIFA president Sepp Blatter, had approved the payment to an account controlled by Warner, then head of the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation.

The New York Times, citing unnamed law enforcement officials, said the payments are a crucial part of the indictment against the 14 football officials and marketing executives.

FIFA said it had acted as an intermediary between South Africa and a World Cup legacy project to “support the African diaspora in Caribbean countries”. 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2015.

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