Sepp Blatter, Under Investigation, to Resign as FIFA President
Sepp
Blatter, who led world soccer’s governing body for 17 years and who was
regarded as one of the most powerful people in global sports, said
Tuesday June, 2, 2015 that he would resign his position, making his announcement in
Zurich even as law enforcement officials in the United States confirmed
that he was a focus of a federal corruption investigation.
Mr.
Blatter had for days tried to distance himself from the controversy,
but several United States of America officials, speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said that in their efforts to build a case against Mr.
Blatter they were hoping to win the cooperation of some of the FIFA
officials now under indictment and work their way up the organization.
Mr.
Blatter’s resignation speech, which he delivered in French to a mostly
empty room at FIFA headquarters, served as a stunning coda to a dramatic
sequence of events that began last Wednesday with a police raid at a
five-star hotel, where seven soccer officials were arrested and held for
extradition to the United States of America on corruption charges.
Sepp Blatter to Resign as FIFA President
Mr. Blatter said he would step down as president of FIFA, four days after his re-election to the post.
The arrests were followed by a detailed explanation by United States Justice Department
officials on their investigation into FIFA. And from there came an
initial dismissal by FIFA of the widespread nature of the charges; a
defiant Mr. Blatter winning re-election to a fifth four-year term as
president and his claiming that he would pilot FIFA’s battered boat “to
shore”; a linking by United States officials of Mr. Blatter’s top deputy
to a series of payments that are believed to be bribes; and, finally,
just before 7 p.m. Central European Time on Tuesday, Mr. Blatter’s
announcement that he would step down from the organization. He has
served, in various roles, for 40 years.
“FIFA
needs a profound restructuring,” Mr. Blatter said. Referring to his
re-election, he then added: “Although the members of FIFA have given me
the new mandate, this mandate does not seem to be supported by everybody
in the world of football.”
After
finishing his prepared remarks, Mr. Blatter walked off the dais and
disappeared through a door without taking questions from the few
reporters who were able to attend the speech, which was given on short
notice. Mr. Blatter’s face was grim, a sharp change from the demeanor he
showed just days earlier when he brashly responded to a question about
resigning with incredulity. “Why would I step down?” he said then. “That
would mean I recognize that I did wrong.”
Given
Mr. Blatter’s sudden, and unexpected, change of heart, soccer officials
around the world were left with two overarching questions on Tuesday
night: First, what changed between Friday and Tuesday to persuade Mr.
Blatter to resign? And, with his departure from the body that oversees
the world’s most popular sport, what will happen next to both him and
the organization?
The
second question has a clearer answer. Mr. Blatter’s resignation is not
immediate. According to Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of
FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, a special meeting of FIFA’s
member nations will be called to elect a new president. According to
FIFA’s rules, members must be given at least four months’ notice for
such a meeting, so Mr. Scala indicated that the probable window for an
election is between December 2015 and March 2016.
Mr.
Blatter will continue his duties in the interim, and in his speech he
said he would use his remaining time to focus on a program of reform,
which would be directed by Mr. Scala.
Who Will Succeed Blatter?
A look at the possible candidates to succeed FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
The
first question, however — as to what convinced Mr. Blatter to leave —
is more complex. While Mr. Blatter has not been directly implicated in
any criminal cases, the disclosure that law enforcement officials in the
United States are targeting him speaks to the legal vulnerability he
may be facing.
A
high-ranking soccer official said Mr. Blatter had been advised by his
legal counsel that continuing in his current position could make
defending him against possible future prosecution more difficult.
The
soccer official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was
not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said in particular there
were concerns about Mr. Blatter, as president, needing to make public
comments on either the continuing Justice Department investigation or a
separate investigation by Swiss authorities into allegations of
improprieties during the awarding of the hosting rights for the 2018 and
2022 World Cup tournaments. While such comments might be considered the
norm for an organization’s leader, the official said, in this instance
they could create additional legal problems for Mr. Blatter.
The
soccer official added that pressure on Mr. Blatter from soccer’s
corporate partners, as well as from various FIFA members, increased
considerably over the weekend as it became clear that the Justice
Department indictment was not just looking at corruption within
Concacaf, the regional governing body overseeing soccer in North
America, Central America and the Caribbean.
Initially,
much of the public focus of the investigation was on Concacaf’s role,
and FIFA officials, including Blatter, portrayed the arrested officials
as rogues. But The New York Times on Monday, based on information from
several United States officials and others briefed on the case, linked
Mr. Blatter’s top deputy, Jérôme Valcke, to a series of payments that
are believed to be bribes connected to South Africa’s winning the vote
that gave it the 2010 World Cup.
Mr.
Valcke and FIFA both denied that he knew about the specifics of the
wire transfers, but according to the same soccer official, Mr. Blatter —
and his lawyers — felt that the current situation had become untenable
and probably would only get worse.
Mr.
Blatter’s resignation apparently brings to an end an enigmatic career
in sports. Born in Visp, a Swiss village, Mr. Blatter studied economics
at the University of Lausanne. Later, he worked for the Swiss Ice Hockey
Federation and the watch company Longines. His mentor at FIFA was the
organization’s former president, João Havelange, who was an Olympic
swimmer from Brazil.
Mr.
Blatter served as Mr. Havelange’s secretary general before becoming
president in 1998. During Mr. Blatter’s tenure atop FIFA, he led a
global expansion of the sport’s popularity (and profitability) as well
as overseeing an expansion of youth soccer and women’s soccer. He also
championed the importance of soccer development in FIFA’s smaller
countries, a strategy that perhaps not coincidentally helped him retain
control of the organization’s one-country, one-vote electorate.
Controversy,
however, never seemed too far away. Whether it was allegations of
corruption in marketing and broadcast agreements or concerns over the
potential bribing of the officials who voted on World Cup hosting
rights, Mr. Blatter often found himself defending the organization’s
integrity.
Most
of the alleged improprieties centered on FIFA’s powerful executive
committee, a body made up of several dozen officials from confederations
around the world who were led by Mr. Blatter.
Members
of the executive committee — in particular two FIFA vice presidents —
were the most significant officials arrested in the raid last Wednesday,
when Swiss police, working on instructions from the United States,
began a sweep of the luxury Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich.
Although
the arrests were not messy — hotel staff members even held up bedsheets
in an attempt to keep pedestrians from seeing the soccer officials as
they were led out a side door — the impact was powerful.
A Roller-Coaster Week for Sepp Blatter
In the wake of a corruption inquiry at
FIFA, Mr. Blatter first said, “I would like to stay with you,” while
promising to reform the organization. But on Tuesday he said he would
step down.
Both
Mr. Blatter and Mr. Scala spoke Tuesday about the need to reform the
executive committee if FIFA hoped to make any meaningful changes to its
image. In a somewhat strange twist, given his lengthy presence as FIFA’s
leader, Mr. Blatter also cited the importance of term limits.
“For
years, we have worked hard to put in place administrative reforms, but
it is plain to me that while these must continue, they are not enough,”
Mr. Blatter said. “We need deep-rooted structural change.”
Mr.
Scala, in his remarks to reporters following Mr. Blatter’s speech, said
“nothing will be off the table” in terms of reforms for FIFA. Changes
could include a greater focus on transparency — including publishing the
compensation earned by the president and executive committee members —
as well as more stringent integrity checks, a proposal that had
previously been rejected by FIFA members.
“There is significant work to be done in order to regain the trust of the public,” Mr. Scala said.
Mr.
Blatter voiced a similar sentiment, though it is not clear just how
involved he will be in any changes. FIFA did not immediately announce
Mr. Blatter’s travel schedule, although he would normally appear at
either Saturday’s European Champion final in Berlin or at the Women’s World Cup, which begins the same day in Canada.
As
for potential candidates to replace Mr. Blatter, it appears likely that
Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan, who lost to Mr. Blatter in last
Friday’s vote, will stand again in the next election. Beyond that,
Michel Platini, head of European soccer’s governing body, has long been
seen as a potential successor to Mr. Blatter.
Mr.
Blatter, in his speech, did not endorse any potential candidates.
Rather, he focused on what he hoped would be the positive nature of his
departure. “What matters to me more than anything,” he said, “is that
when all of this is over, football is the winner.”
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