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Ongoing FIFA Trouble | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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FIFA lawyers say Sepp Blatter, Jerome Valcke and Markus Kattner got $80M over five years, Getty images


Zurich (Switzerland) – FIFA scandals have recently sampled in an ongoing parade of exposed corruption with its latest being the Swiss police raiding its headquarters in Zurich. In the search, each of former president Sepp Blatter, former FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke and finance director Markus Kattner were found guilty of splitting a unilaterally decided award of 80-million-dollars over the course of the last five year.

Moreover Media outlets now also point fingers against current top FIFA chief Gianni Infantino for rumored concealing of suspicious records.

Infantino, at the May 13th FIFA congress in Mexico, had announced that the corruption diseasing the heart of the soccer industry has been put to an end. However, Infantino’s statement was made too soon.

Those events are nothing but mere chapters in the scandalous novel written under FIFA tables which are being brought to light one by one since May 2015. The series of exposés were first sparked on the evening of voting for Blatter’s fifth consequent term for presidency. At that night the Swiss police raided one of the hotels arresting seven FIFA big shots under the request of U.S. prosecution.

According to the report, on April 30, 2011, just before a FIFA presidential election when it was not certain whether Blatter would be re-elected to a new four-year term, or not, Valcke and Kattner were given 8.5-year contract extensions until 2019 “with big increases in their base salaries and bonuses”.

They also allegedly received “generous severance terms that guaranteed them full payment – up $17.9m and $10.03m respectively – in case their employment with FIFA” was terminated, the likely consequence should Blatter lost his position.

Blatter and Valcke have consistently denied wrongdoing but were banned for six and 12 years, respectively, by FIFA’s ethics committee this year.

Reports said that when FIFA fired Kattner, who joined FIFA as finance director in 2003, it was unclear if the contracts were illegal.

“The evidence appears to reveal a coordinated effort by three former top officials of FIFA to enrich themselves through annual salary increases, World Cup bonuses and other incentives totaling more than 79m Swiss francs [$80m] – in just the last five years,” Bill Burck, a partner with the Quinn Emanuel audit firm, said on Friday.

Over the last year, Blatter, Valcke and Kattner have been fired, or booted out of office and are now facing growing scrutiny from Swiss and US prosecutors