By Andrew Warshaw in Manama, Bahrain
May 10 – Whatever spin Gianni Infantino puts on it – and he has promised to give his side of the story at the end of tomorrow’s full Congress – FIFA’s ousted ethics chiefs insist they were given no notice whatsoever of the decision to remove them from office and that the lack of a transition period will set FIFA’s much-touted reform process back several years.
When chief investigator Cornel Borbely (pictured right) and lead judge Hans-Joachim Eckert (pictured left), who became virtual household names in football political circles in the effort to clean up FIFA, boarded a plane en route for Bahrain on Tuesday, they thought they were going to attend a talk shop aimed at enhancing the ethics process that has become such an integral part of FIFA’s governance mechanism.
Imagine their surprise, then, when they got off the plane and discovered from media reports – not from FIFA’s administration – that they had been summarily kicked out despite a mountain of unresolved ongoing investigations.
The extent of perhaps the biggest power grab and most cynical piece of skulduggery by Infantino since he took over from Blatter cannot be under-estimated.
Before cancelling the ethics meeting they were supposed to attend (they were in no mood to go ahead knowing they were out the door when their mandate expired 24 hours later), both men held a hastily arranged press conference in downtown Bahrain to express their utter dismay – and no little outrage – at having been jettisoned after four years in charge of the ethics committee, their work having ended the careers of a raft of corrupt officials.
Revealing there were “several hundred cases” of corruption pending, Borbely said the reform process had become “weakened and incapacited” and that it would be virtually impossible for their replacements, Colombian lawyer Maria Claudia Rojas and Greek judge Vassilios Skouris, who was president of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg for 12 years until 2015, to process the cases without a “proper period of transition” and without the “know-how, experience and expertise” to get to grips with how football investigations, with the devil often in the detail, work.
“Our removal means nothing else but the end of the reform process,” said Borbely. “The ethics commission is the key institution of the FIFA reforms. As it seems now, the work of the ethics committee was inconvenient for functionaries, for FIFA officials. The removal is not in FIFA’s best interests… and it’s a setback for the fight against corruption. FIFA’s code of ethics is a dead letter.”
Borbely said he could not comment on specific cases that were pending or ongoing but revealed: “We investigated several hundred cases and several hundred are still pending and ongoing at the moment.”
The dramatic recommendation was taken by the all-powerful FIFA Council on Tuesday but clearly masterminded by Infantino. Although Borbely and Eckert refused to go so far as to accuse the FIFA president of having a personal vendetta against them (an ethics investigation was launched against Infantino last year even though he was cleared), it is understood that that members of FIFA’s ruling Council were split over the decision to get rid of them.
Eckert, the judge who opened proceedings against Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini in November 2015 – ironically resulting in Infantino becoming FIFA president through a timely piece of opportunism – didn’t mince his words either.
“It’s not a great day for FIFA,” Eckert said. “The loser is soccer, because trying to get a good, honest FIFA now it’s very difficult.”
Not that Eckert hasn’t escaped criticism especially for failing to publish in full – instead of in summary form – the now-infamous 430-page Michael Garcia report into shady dealings over the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.
Only a handful of people have read the report in its entirety and Eckert’s summary was described by Garcia at one point as being “erroneous and incomplete” after a two-year probe.
But hitting back, Eckert says that couldn’t be reason for failing to renew his mandate.
“I protected people when Garcia wrote that something simply looked like corruption,” he told reporters. “That wasn’t enough for me to go to the media. I wanted evidence. That was the difference between him and me.”
Both Borbely and Eckert said they only found out via their “mobile phones” when they landed in Bahrain on Tuesday evening that they had been replaced. “I would like to have an explanation,” said Eckert.
Whatever FIFA’s take, deciding that the pair were surplus to requirements sends out the worst possible message after the spate of damaging corruption scandals that brought FIFA to its knees.
But their versions of events does not exactly tally with FIFA’s. It is understood all six confederations were invited to submit nominations for the top two ethics roles – as well as for all the other positions on FIFA’s various governance committees that have come up for renewal – and that Borbely and Eckert did not figure on any of the lists.
Sour grapes then? Not according to Borbely who said it was just as much the process as the non-rehiring that irked him, suggesting FIFA had broken its own statutes, which apparently call for four months’ notice before such action can be taken.
“We worked well on a very high level with a huge volume of cases. There was no need to change the Ethics Committee – the only conclusion can be that this was politically intended. Without a functioning ethics committee, the ethics code is dead. My department investigated the likes of Blatter, Platini, Chung and Jerome Valcke. Now all but one of my team are gone.”
Later Wednesday, in the briefest of statements, FIFA attempted to justify the sweeping changes to its governance personnel by saying the new appointees represented a better geographic spread
“The proposed list of candidates for the Audit and Compliance Committee, the Governance Committee and the judicial bodies was agreed to following a thorough consultation process involving FIFA and the six confederations,” the statement said. “The decision on the final list of candidates was then agreed to unanimously by the FIFA Council.”
Agreed unanimously perhaps but Individually selected in the first place by whom? Not difficult to guess.
“These individuals have been chosen because they are recognised, high-profile experts in their respective fields. Moreover, they better reflect the geographic and gender diversity that must be a part of an international organisation like FIFA,” the statement concluded.
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