I think we’re all well aware that, despite the protestations of our esteemed Minister of Sport and Recreation Fikile Mbalula, we forked over some or other kind of bribe during our successful 2010 World Cup bid. Danny Jordaan may have tried to dress it up as something else but you only need one look at the letter below to piece what happened together.
The letter, sent by the South African Football Association (SAFA) and addressed to FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke, clearly illustrates our attempts to channel the $10 million to disgraced former FIFA vice president Jack Warner, then the president of CONCACAF. The letter below before we get nitty-gritty…
Right, let’s get stuck in shall we? First of all FIFA earlier admitted that they had processed a $10 million payment from SAFA to Warner, but had stressed that Valkce wasn’t involved at all. First set of alarm bells going off, but we’re just getting started here. This from Sport24:
The letter’s author, SAFA president at the time Molefi Oliphant, also requests that the Diaspora Legacy Progamme be administered and implemented by the president of CONCACAF…
Yeah, we seem pretty insistent that Warner is the man who handles these finances don’t we? This tweet from the chief Sports Reporter for the Press Association:
It’s almost as if we wanted him and him alone to have access to these funds, and our insistence on this point stinks of fishy behaviour.
Now by the letter of the law FIFA hasn’t done anything wrong by redirecting the payments to Warner, they themselves not incurring any costs and the money belonging to SAFA as part of the Organising Committee’s overall budget. Why the big denial then?
You see when you tell a massive lie repeatedly over a long enough period of time (24 years according to US investigators) even the most well-rehearsed stories will start to come apart at the seams. It looks like FIFA, SAFA and the greedy money-grabbing ideology deeply rooted within both are about to be exposed and I, for one, cannot wait until the squealing begins.
If you thought the bribery itself was a messy and undignified affair, I would bet the best is yet to come.
