FIFA is corrupt...

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 4:46 am

LawBeefaroni wrote:Tim Roth as Blatter? How?

Money.

This movie will go down in history as a textbook example of bad timing.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 11:03 am

So apparently Morocco won the 2010 bid with bribes, but the vote was rigged for South Africa

The paper reports, after talking with Michel Bacchini -- a former FIFA director who worked as a consultant to the Moroccan bid team -- that former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner accepted a $1 million bribe from Morocco, but then double-crossed them and voted for South Africa

This rabbit hole is just getting deeper and deeper for FIFA. I expect Sepp Blatter will end up somewhere in Russia in a villa along the Black Sea soon

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 11:19 am

John Oliver keeps his promise and drinks a Bud Light Lime.

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 11:27 am

I thought he said if they pulled their advertising, he would do those things, not just Blatter leaving on his own? Did they pull their advertising from FIFA? That would be a much bigger shock to me than Blatter resigning.

Awesome either way.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 11:47 am

Carpet_pissr wrote:I thought he said if they pulled their advertising, he would do those things, not just Blatter leaving on his own? Did they pull their advertising from FIFA? That would be a much bigger shock to me than Blatter resigning.

Awesome either way.

Watch the beginning again. He said if they used their influence to get Batter removed. He acknowledges that there is no evidence they caused the change, but wanted to keep his promise anyway.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:09 pm

United Passions has a domestic gross of $607!!

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:15 pm

Only $24,999,393 to break even!

Admittedly though, not a great start.

Wait, that's just US numbers. Most people here probably think Playstation soccer game when someone says "FIFA".

I do wonder what international ticket sales have been like. The reviews are beyond hilarious...such...anger!

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:20 pm

El Guapo wrote:Jack Warner promises to spill secrets on FIFA, Sepp Blatter.

The revelations came first in a paid political ad, titled "Jack Warner: The gloves are off," in which he said he had prepared a comprehensive series of documents on FIFA's transactions, including checks and corroborated statements.

They have been placed in "different and respected hands," he said. "There can be no turning back."

In the ad, aired on TV in his native Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday, Warner said he would "no longer keep secrets for those persons who now seek actively to destroy this country's hard-won international image."

He also said, "I reasonably and surely fear for my life."
Jack Warner comes across as somewhat unhinged (especially give the whole Onion article thing), so it's unclear how much his testimony would be worth, but at the same time it seems fairly likely that he has some fairly damaging evidence in his possession.

I gotta find some way to get on the FIFA case jury.

In response to Jack Warner's paid ad, John Oliver purchased five minutes on Trinidadian television to air John Oliver: The Mittens of Disapproval Are On.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:21 pm

$607 is laughable but it was only ten theaters over three days.

It's pretty much a non-release.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 12:55 pm

El Guapo wrote:In response to Jack Warner's paid ad, John Oliver purchased five minutes on Trinidadian television to air John Oliver: The Mittens of Disapproval Are On.

Another example of how Oliver separates himself from the competition: taking his show outside of the actual show.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 12:57 pm

It's gotta be so much fun to be John Oliver.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 9:34 am

Jack Warner responds to that "Comedian Fool" John Oliver You just can't make this stuff up

stessier · Post by **stessier** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 10:59 am

I have to find a way to watch more John Oliver. That spot was great. Wonder how much it cost.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 11:06 am

stessier wrote:I have to find a way to watch more John Oliver. That spot was great. Wonder how much it cost.

You can listen to him with Andy Zaltzman when you can't watch.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 12:00 pm

tru1cy wrote:Jack Warner responds to that "Comedian Fool" John Oliver You just can't make this stuff up

I love the soundtrack.

Also, our involvement in the international organization FIFA is none of your business, foreigners.

I also enjoyed his characterization of Olivier's bit as an attack on the entire population instead of a personal attack on him directly.

I *AM* Trinidad and Tobago!

Also, the racism in the comments sucked. There is a BOATLOAD of reasons to criticize him just from this one speech alone. Race has nothing to do with any of them, though.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Mon Jun 15, 2015 10:02 pm

tru1cy wrote:Jack Warner responds to that "Comedian Fool" John Oliver You just can't make this stuff up

John Oliver kicks it up a notch.

I really really hope Jack Warner responds.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 10:41 am

El Guapo wrote:
tru1cy wrote:Jack Warner responds to that "Comedian Fool" John Oliver You just can't make this stuff up
John Oliver kicks it up a notch.

I really really hope Jack Warner responds.

He should just hope that Jack Bauer doesn't respond to that Christmas Tree bit.

That bit did irreparable damage to National Security.

pr0ner · Post by **pr0ner** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 1:27 pm

Blatter is now saying he is considering not resiging for the good of FIFA.

Ugh.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 1:30 pm

I saw that earlier, but it was reported as coming from an anonymous source. So take it with a very large grain of salt.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:35 am

More

FIFA and embattled President Sepp Blatter faced more pressure on Monday as U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch predicted a new round of indictments in a widening investigation of corruption in international soccer.
...
Lynch spoke alongside her Swiss counterpart, Michael Lauber, whose separate investigation of money laundering appears equally threatening to FIFA and its soon-departing president.

Swiss federal agencies have seized properties in the Swiss Alps and seized evidence during house searches in western Switzerland, Lauber said.
...
A total of 121 bank accounts have been reported as suspicious by a Swiss financial intelligence unit to Lauber's team of prosecutors, he said.

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 12:01 pm

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:43 pm

Swiss AG opened criminal proceeding on Sepp Blatter I assume he'll end up in a villa along the Black Sea under Russia's care

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:45 pm

Or some South American embassy.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:48 pm

If Blatter's not already apartment hunting in the Crimea, then he's a fool.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 1:43 am

FIFA Bans Jack Warner From Soccer for Life

Mr. Warner, who is in Trinidad, is scheduled for a hearing there related to his extradition proceedings in December.

Meanwhile, his soccer ban won’t make any real practical difference since Mr. Warner, 72 years old, doesn’t hold an official position in soccer and was unlikely to return to the upper echelons of the sport’s administration. Most of the organization had long severed ties with him, FIFA insiders say.

“I left the FIFA in April 2011 and if in September 2015 (some four years and five months after) the FIFA wants to ban me for life without even a hearing then so be it,” Mr. Warner wrote in a statement posted to his official Facebook page. “Given what is happening in Zurich with Sepp Blatter I guess that there is no such thing as a coincidence.”

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 10:41 am

NYT

The leadership of world soccer’s governing body plunged into chaos on Thursday, as three of the game’s most powerful figures, including Sepp Blatter, the longtime president of FIFA, were suspended amid an investigation by the Swiss authorities into suspected corruption.

In addition to Mr. Blatter, Michel Platini, who is a FIFA vice president and the head of European soccer’s governing body, and FIFA’s secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, who was already on disciplinary leave, were “provisionally banned” from the sport. The suspensions take effect immediately.

“The grounds for these decisions are the investigations that are being carried out by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee,” FIFA said in a statement.

A fourth executive, the former FIFA vice president Chung Mong-joon, was barred from the sport for six years and fined 100,000 Swiss francs, or about $103,000, on Thursday. Mr. Chung, a South Korean billionaire whose family heads the Hyundai conglomerate, had, like Mr. Platini, been a candidate to replace Mr. Blatter. But he has been found guilty of infringing FIFA’s ethics code in connection with the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, FIFA said.
...
The sanctions for all four men were imposed by FIFA’s independent ethics committee. Richard Cullen and Lorenz Erni, lawyers for Mr. Blatter, released a statement shortly after the punishments were announced criticizing the process by which the ethics committee reached its decision and promising to contest it.
...
The suspensions for Mr. Blatter, Mr. Platini and Mr. Valcke can be renewed for an additional 45 days after the initial 90, and it is believed that they will require a complete separation from FIFA, where Mr. Blatter has worked in various roles since 1975. In a statement, FIFA said that Mr. Blatter “is not allowed to represent FIFA in any capacity, act on the organization’s behalf, or communicate to media or other stakeholders as a FIFA representative.” According to a person close to Mr. Blatter, the president may dispute whether that prohibits him from going to his office each day.

The suspensions leave FIFA, as well UEFA, which runs soccer in Europe, in disarray. David Gill and Wolfgang Niersbach, two members of FIFA’s powerful executive committee, called for an emergency meeting as soon as possible. All 54 member nations of UEFA are also expected to have their own hasty summit as soon as next week.

FIFA will now be run by an interim president, Issa Hayatou, who is the Cameroonian leader of African soccer’s governing body and the most senior FIFA vice president. Mr. Hayatou, however, was reprimanded in 2011 by the International Olympics Committee’s ethics commission after he admitted to receiving payments from a marketing company, which was, in the commission’s view, a conflict of interest.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 10:47 am

Blatter will end up in Russia soon and I expect the 2022 WC will be finding a new host too

stessier · Post by **stessier** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 10:52 am

Since it has been asked everyone else I've seen, let me add it here as well...

FIFA has an Ethics Committee??????

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 10:57 am

stessier wrote:Since it has been asked everyone else I've seen, let me add it here as well...

FIFA has an Ethics Committee??????

Sure, it's just not a pro-ethics committee.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 10:45 am

Don't know how I missed this but Sepp Blatter admitted that 2018 & 2022 World Cup were fixed before the bidding even began

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 11:00 am

FIFA is done. Those countries are going to sue it into oblivion for the financial losses.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 12:14 pm

Anything Blatter says at this point, even the stuff that incriminates himself, should be taken with a truckload of salt right now (and that's what the big guys are doing). He's in full vengeance mode, trying to pull down the people he feels have betrayed him. His statements can't be taken as truth.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 12:28 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:FIFA is done. Those countries are going to sue it into oblivion for the financial losses.

They won't do that, they need FIFA as much as FIFA needs them. They'll settle for various concessions and promises. There may be some repayments, notably of any public funds spent, but it won't be enough to destroy FIFA.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 12:41 pm

Its member countries have more of a chance of dissolving than FIFA does.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 12:56 pm

TiLT wrote:Anything Blatter says at this point, even the stuff that incriminates himself, should be taken with a truckload of salt right now (and that's what the big guys are doing). He's in full vengeance mode, trying to pull down the people he feels have betrayed him. His statements can't be taken as truth.

Actually, that's my feeling too. Honestly, he's just burning down the house he built

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 12:57 pm

TiLT wrote:Anything Blatter says at this point, even the stuff that incriminates himself, should be taken with a truckload of salt right now (and that's what the big guys are doing). He's in full vengeance mode, trying to pull down the people he feels have betrayed him. His statements can't be taken as truth.

I have to imagine that Blatter has documents, though. If Blatter is truly in full vengeance mode, then everyone is going down, especially since no one has apparently felt the need to be careful about any of this stuff.

FIFA as an organization may survive (and international soccer will certainly survive), but the FIFA org chart a couple years from now is probably going to look very, very different.

I think the key question is whether Blatter can strike a plea bargain with DOJ that would satisfy both parties. DOJ can't really let him off the hook in exchange for cooperation, because he was the head of the criminal organization in question. You figure that they would be willing to give him some concessions in exchange for cooperation, but he would have to go to jail and probably for a non-trivial amount of time...would he be willing to do that?

And why isn't he living in the Crimea yet?

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 1:02 pm

El Guapo wrote: And why isn't he living in the Crimea yet?

Presumably because he knows a lot of things. People who have the goods on Russia often wind up dead.

tru1cy · Post by **tru1cy** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 1:57 pm

Financial Times, " Lunch with Sepp Blatter

Financial Times wrote:As we settle into our conversation, he quickly pinpoints the moment when Fifa’s troubles — and his downward spiral — began. “It is linked to this now famous date: December 2, 2010,” he says, referring the day he pulled Qatar’s name out of the envelope as host of the 2022 World Cup.
“If you see my face when I opened it, I was not the happiest man to say it is Qatar. Definitely not.” The decision caused outrage, even among those who do not follow football. “We were in a situation where nobody understood why the World Cup goes to one of the smallest countries in the world,” he says.
Blatter then drops a bombshell: he did try to rig the vote but for the US, not for Qatar. There had been a “gentleman’s agreement”, he tells me, among Fifa’s leaders that the 2018 and 2022 competitions would go to the “two superpowers” Russia and the US; “It was behind the scenes. It was diplomatically arranged to go there.”

Yeah, he's burning down the house

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 2:12 pm

tru1cy wrote:Financial Times, " Lunch with Sepp Blatter

Financial Times wrote:As we settle into our conversation, he quickly pinpoints the moment when Fifa’s troubles — and his downward spiral — began. “It is linked to this now famous date: December 2, 2010,” he says, referring the day he pulled Qatar’s name out of the envelope as host of the 2022 World Cup.
“If you see my face when I opened it, I was not the happiest man to say it is Qatar. Definitely not.” The decision caused outrage, even among those who do not follow football. “We were in a situation where nobody understood why the World Cup goes to one of the smallest countries in the world,” he says.
Blatter then drops a bombshell: he did try to rig the vote but for the US, not for Qatar. There had been a “gentleman’s agreement”, he tells me, among Fifa’s leaders that the 2018 and 2022 competitions would go to the “two superpowers” Russia and the US; “It was behind the scenes. It was diplomatically arranged to go there.”

Yeah, he's burning down the house

He's also setting the groundwork for his claim of unfair victimization at the hands of a US government out for vengeance for not getting 2022.

What he doesn't know is that the US doesn't really care since the 2022 Superbowl will be played in London.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 2:37 pm

tru1cy wrote:Financial Times, " Lunch with Sepp Blatter

Financial Times wrote:As we settle into our conversation, he quickly pinpoints the moment when Fifa’s troubles — and his downward spiral — began. “It is linked to this now famous date: December 2, 2010,” he says, referring the day he pulled Qatar’s name out of the envelope as host of the 2022 World Cup.
“If you see my face when I opened it, I was not the happiest man to say it is Qatar. Definitely not.” The decision caused outrage, even among those who do not follow football. “We were in a situation where nobody understood why the World Cup goes to one of the smallest countries in the world,” he says.
Blatter then drops a bombshell: he did try to rig the vote but for the US, not for Qatar. There had been a “gentleman’s agreement”, he tells me, among Fifa’s leaders that the 2018 and 2022 competitions would go to the “two superpowers” Russia and the US; “It was behind the scenes. It was diplomatically arranged to go there.”

Yeah, he's burning down the house

And I suspect not a single thing he said in that quote is the truth.