FIFA is facing further questions over its role in channelling a $10mUSD payment through its accounts after fresh disclosures about South Africa’s role in the scandal.
A former senior official of the South African FA (SAFA) has claimed its executive board had been kept in the dark about the payment, which is alleged to have been as payment for World Cup votes.
It comes after a freedom of information request by South Africa’s news group Media24 revealed that apart from two letters, no SAFA records exist of any documents or minutes to show that the payment had ever been discussed or authorised by the football body or the 2010 World Cup local organising committee.
Eddie Du Plooy, a SAFA executive committee member until 2009, said he had contacted former colleagues about the 10million dollar payment – sent to the disgraced former vice-president Jack Warner in 2008 nominally to support the “African diaspora” in the Caribbean – and they too had known nothing about it until the bribery scandal broke in May.
He told South African website Sport24: “Everyone I phoned – six, seven people – said they knew nothing about the donation and hadn’t heard of this diaspora programme.
“They were furious. Our integrity is now being questioned. We are seen as being part of the decision. We feel as though we have been sold out.”
The payment in 2008 from FIFA to an account controlled by followed two letters from the South Africa FA (SAFA) to FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke.
The letters stated the money was to support the African diaspora in the Caribbean. Former FIFA member Chuck Blazer has pleaded guilty in the US courts to receiving some of the money as payment for voting for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup.
In December 2007, Danny Jordaan, the chief executive of the 2010 organising committee, asked FIFA to deduct the 10million dollars from its World Cup budget. In March 2008, SAFA’s president Molefi Oliphant wrote to FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke instructing the money to be sent to an account controlled by Warner – although two payments had already been made to Warner from a FIFA account.
The disclosure of the Oliphant letter on June 2 was followed within hours by Sepp Blatter announcing he is to step down as FIFA president in February.
The South African government has insisted the payment was not a bribe but a donation to the CONCACAF confederation to support football development.