Mohamed bin Hammam wants Fifa to investigate Sepp Blatter, too

• Bin Hammam says Blatter knew of ‘payments allegedly made’ • Blatter hits back at Fifa presidential election rival Mohamed Bin Hammam, the Fifa presidential challenger accused of giving cash bribes to voters, has accused his opponent Sepp Blatter of effectively approving the alleged payments and called for him to be investigated as well. As Fifa’s warring family turned on itself and the governing body’s crisis deepened, the Qatari claimed the dossier of allegations against him also alleged that his co-accused Jack Warner had told Blatter about the payments and took no action. Fifa’s code of ethics places a duty of disclosure on any official to “report any evidence of violations of conduct to the Fifa secretary general”, for transfer to the ethics committee. Bin Hammam formally wrote to Fifa’s secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, on Thursday to request that the investigation be widened to include Blatter. If Bin Hammam is to be condemned he will seek to take Blatter down with him and, in a high stakes strategy, appears to accept that payments were made but claims that Blatter knew about them and said nothing. Amid febrile claim and counter-claim, further details emerged of the allegations contained in the dossier compiled by the US attorney John Collins at the behest of Fifa’s US executive committee member, Chuck Blazer, the Concacaf secretary general. The file, which contains signed affidavits from officials approached at a specially convened meeting of the Caribbean Football Union and offered payments of up to $40,000 from Bin Hammam, is believed to allege the “football development” cash was proffered in private briefings with the 25 attendees. Some of those who rejected the cash approached Blazer following the specially convened conference on 10 and 11 May, arranged after Bin Hammam said he was earlier unable to attend the confederation’s Congress in Miami for visa reasons. Concacaf, controlled by its controversial and much-criticised president, Jack Warner, has consistently played a pivotal role in presidential elections due to exercising its bloc of 35 votes of the 208 on offer. Bin Hammam arrived in Zurich on Thursday ahead of next week’s Fifa Congress and, as if to illustrate the air of unreality surrounding the crisis, will today take part in a meeting of the finance committee as planned. On Sunday, he will face the Fifa ethics committee alongside Warner and two CFU officials who are alleged to have been involved in distributing the cash. In a statement, Bin Hammam said the bribery claims were “without substance” and added: “The accusations also contain statements according to which Mr Blatter, the incumbent Fifa president, was informed of, but did not oppose, payments allegedly made to members of the Caribbean Football Union.” In a rambling article on the InsideWorldFootball website, Blatter insisted that he took “absolutely no joy” in the latest allegations and was “shocked, saddened and deeply unhappy at about the charges levelled against a man whose friendship I enjoyed for many years”. Blatter has insisted he had no knowledge of the dossier or the allegations, which were delivered to Valcke by Collins following his investigation, until he arrived in Zurich on Wednesday morning following a trip to Japan. He used the article to hit back at claims he orchestrated the affair or its timing: “To now assume that the present ordeal of my opponent were to fill me with some sort of perverse satisfaction or that this entire matter was somehow masterminded by me is ludicrous and completely reprehensible.” He again insisted he could be trusted to clean up the organisation, which sits on reserves of $1.28bn: “Fifa does not need a revolution. What Fifa needs is iron clad laws that are implemented forcefully … “When a Swiss farmer’s neighbour has a cow while he has none, the less fortunate farmer will work twice as hard so that one day he can buy a cow as well,” he said. “When another farmer, elsewhere, on an island, say, has no cow but his neighbour does, that farmer will kill the neighbour’s cow out of sheer malice. I’d rather be a Swiss farmer, like it or not.”The Football Association confirmed that it would pass its own report, compiled by James Dingemans QC in the wake of bribery allegations against four executive committee members made by former chairman Lord Triesman, to Fifaon Friday. The new claims against Bin Hammam and Warner, which took to nine the number of executive committee members facing bribery allegations, have plunged the organisation deeper into crisis and thrown plans for next week’s presidential vote and Congress into chaos. It is expected that if Bin Hammam is suspended, Fifa would seek to press on with the vote. Football officials in the US and in Australia are considering whether to lobby for the reopening of the 2022 bid process if Bin Hammam is suspended. The Qatari was not an official member of the bid team but played a pivotal role in delivering victory. Mohamed bin Hammam Sepp Blatter Football politics Fifa Owen Gibson guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 27, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.