Posts Tagged ‘Chris Eaton’

Because Erin Brockovich Didn’t Work for a Qatari Anti-Corruption Agency

Saturday, March 2nd, 2013

Right. Lets take a short break from the Dan-Tan-not-being-arrested-saga to get a good laugh at the latest travesty floating about in the sports corruption industry. A Hollywood producer is mooting doing a film about Chris Eaton and his sterling role in cleaning up soccer.

Ha, ha, ha! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dearie-me. I thought it could not get any better than the oxymoron of a Qatari-anti-corruption agency. This is a wonderful joke but as a credible project, it is a complete non-starter.

A little review for people new to the issue. Twenty years ago, Chris Eaton worked as a cop, but now he is largely a bureaucrat. His principal good action in the fight against match-fixing was trying to enact a set of reforms at FIFA. He failed. They threw him out. He is now working for those paragons of anti-corruption, you know the ones that fans around the world look up to, the Qatari soccer governance people.

Here is why trying to make Eaton the principal hero of the anti-match-fixing campaign is a travesty.

There are literally dozens of hard-working, tough street cops who have done the real job of fighting match-fixing. These men and women, in a variety of different countries, have worked their asses off, made the arrests and got the actual convictions.

How then did Eaton become the hero?

Some of it was due to a dreadful article by a sometime-ESPN writer Brett Forrest. There were a number of mistakes in the article, but one of them was naming Wilson Raj Perumal as ‘The World’s Most Prolific Match-Fixer’. If you have seen the recent campaign to get Dan Tan arrested, then you know Perumal is not even the most prolific match-fixer in Singapore, let alone the world.

Why did Forrest get it so wrong?

Because he does not know match-fixing. He is a good fellow. Keen at his job, etc. But not an expert in this field. So he wrote a hagiography of Eaton and missed the true heroes of the fight against fixing.

However, not to worry, this is a film that will not get made. In general, Hollywood producers and studios like complete and accurate stories. Erin Brockovich did not work for a Qatari anti-corruption agency. Donnie Brasco was actually an undercover police investigator. Serpico did take on a corrupt world and clean it up. This is one film that will not attract top actors or directors, once they understand the true and full picture.

Share

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Main | No Comments »

The Sports Corruption Industry and the Great Cover-Up II

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

10,000 Hours and the Enigma of Chris Eaton

To review  – there is a now an anti-match-fixing industry.  It is like the post 9/11 anti-terrorist-complex in the United States, a self-generating, commercially motivated phenomenon.  So in the same way it did not benefit the anti-terrorist industry for Osama bin Laden to be captured (rather they want terrorists to be out there, uncaptured – something vague and ill-defined to allow the industry to continue) – so too is it with the anti-match-fixing industry.  As an industry it does not benefit if the fixers are captured or stopped, rather it benefits the industry for the fixers to carry on while they plan various activities. 

Part of the reason for this situation is described by the Canadian writer and commentator Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Gladwell writes of the need for ‘10,000 hours’ of practice before a person becomes proficient in their field.   So too is it in the sports anti-corruption industry.  In the first article in this series,  I wrote of the generations of experts and consultants who had arisen in this field purportedly to fight against corruption in sports.  I wrote about the first generation in ‘The Fix’.   But now the generation that came up after the release of the book is being gradually supplanted by new arrivals. 

The problem is that often just as these ‘experts’  become useful – just as they accumulate enough information and knowledge to understand the true nature of the fight, then they are pushed out of the field or marginalized.   This is not accidental.  The status quo does not want real change. They are helping cover-up one of the worst corruption scandals in sports, and as people begin to appreciate what is going on, they are often given the boot.  The best example of this phenomenon is the career of Chris Eaton, the former head of integrity at FIFA.

In my opinion, Chris Eaton entered FIFA like a jerk and left like a lion.  He made two early mistakes.  The first was that he showed an inclination to downplay the work of earlier anti-corruption fighters, while touting the benefits of FIFA leading the fight against corruption in sports.

Second, Eaton gathered around him a stable of tame sports journalists.  Their relationship was close, but informal.  The unspoken and mostly unrealized quid pro quo between them was that Eaton would give them information and they would write articles praising Eaton as the best, and often only, fighter against sports corruption. 

The problem about these paeans was that they were not true.  Much of the work they ascribed to Eaton was actually the work of other people. Eaton would go visit various police match-fixing investigations to provide law enforcement with FIFA’s perspective. Then what actually happened (and I have been told the same story by a number of different police investigators) was that the press would give Eaton the credit for the police investigations. The investigators were furious.  For them it was the worst of worlds, their investigations were potentially being hindered and they were not getting the proper credit for their fight against match-fixing. 

However, gradually something started to happen with Eaton.   As he began to acquire knowledge, he began to be aware of the true situation with match-fixing. He began to do genuinely brilliant work.   Some of his team of investigators are superb.   The plans and programs Eaton tried to put in place at FIFA for fighting corruption in international football are textbook examples of good preventative anti-corruption work.   But it was too late.  FIFA is not an organization where second-tier executives are supposed to take the media limelight from Sepp Blatter and Eaton had received far too much praise and column inches.  More importantly, FIFA is not an organization that has a culture that welcomed Eaton’s excellent plans for fighting corruption.  A genuine program of anti-corruption at FIFA was about as welcome as a drunk Uncle at a Mennonite wedding.   So Eaton and many of his investigators were gradually shown the door at FIFA.

Now Eaton continues to fight against corruption in sports. He usually says interesting and truthful things.  He should be listened to. The problem is that he is working for what many people perceive as a walking oxymoron – a Qatari anti-corruption agency.  Few sports commentators, after the problems in awarding the 2022 World Cup, believe that the Qataris are disinterested in their pursuit of sports corruption. They may be, but few people believe it. 

Overall, though Chris Eaton’s anti-match-fixing career mirrors what happens to many sports consultants and experts in the anti-match-fixing field – once they become aware of what is actually going on they are marginalized.   This is done, in part, to protect the status quo and continue the great cover-up.   More soon:

Share

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Main | 1 Comment »

Bizarre Refereeing and the Fixers

Tuesday, August 7th, 2012

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The e-mail inbox is full, once again, with requests for comments on two controversial stories that have just broken in England.

Canada vs. the United States women’s Olympic semi-final: a superb match, marred with some bizarre refereeing. One extraordinary set of decisions led directly to the U.S’s equalizing goal. Canadian journalists have been demanding to know if ‘the fix was in’?

I try to never make remarks about possible corruption in matches that I simply watch. To be a referee is a pretty thankless task. Everyone is capable of making mistakes (when was the last time you got 100% on an exam?). So unless I have compelling first-hand evidence of bribes being passed, I never say if a match has been fixed simply from watching it. For me, it is matter of credibility. What I say normally about certain matches being fixed or the gang of fixers still being in operation is controversial enough.

This brings me to the second story – Chris Eaton (former FIFA head of security) has finally came out and confirmed that what I said before, during and after the South Africa World Cup in 2010 is true. There were people trying to fix matches at the tournament. They were focusing on the African teams. They were operating even after I exposed their activities two years before that in The Fix.

A number of points:

Much of the actual story of what went on in South Africa Chris leaves out.

I was hampered from exposing the complete truth at that time in South Africa by a couple of moronic British journalists, (a shocking story for anyone who believes in a tough, rigorous fourth estate. I write about it in my upcoming book).

It has taken Eaton two years to reveal the story of the fixers. We simply cannot rely on the officials or the regular sports media to properly protect the game that we love. We need an international anti-corruption agency to make sure the fixers are stopped cold and when we see bizarre refereeing in the future, we simply think that it is an accident not corruption.

Share

Tags: , ,
Posted in Main | 3 Comments »

Doncaster Rovers vs. Real Madrid? How to Understand FIFA’s Anti-corruption reforms

Monday, May 21st, 2012

It is the time for the FIFA Congress in Budapest. The agenda is dominated by anti-corruption and match-fixing items. How can you as a fan or sports journalist figure out what is going on? Here is a short primer to the issues and questions you need to ask:

The Current Situation

There is a gang of Asian match-fixers who have fixed matches in every continent and at just about every level of football from youth team matches up to the World Cup itself. I exposed their activities in The Fix. There are now over-thirty police investigations into their work around the globe: Serie A, Germany, Zimbabwe, etc. However, only one member of the gang has actually been arrested. The rest continue their business without any problems. The gang is able to do that because it has high-level political and financial protection in Asia.

There is a further problem. Because of the globalization of the sports gambling world, now almost anyone can fix a football match. We have seen this happen across Eastern Europe as the recent FIF Pro survey of professional football players shows. The epidemic of match corruption is no longer the purvey of a small group of fixers, but really any dodgy club owner or influential player can organize their own fix as part of their business model or pension plan.

The organization that governs the sport – FIFA – has absolutely no professional credibility on the issue of corruption.   An extraordinarily high number of its top executives have been convicted of corruption or censored by its own ethics committee.

For the last two years, we have watched FIFA attempt to deal with these issues. They have presented us with a type of comic opera. At various times, from stage left appeared a new character in a new uniform to add a purported taste of integrity to FIFA – Sylvia Schenk, Chris Eaton, Placido Domingo, Henry Kissinger, and now, Mark Pieth.  They strutted across the stage for a few brief months. They held some press conferences. They gathered lots of good sounding headlines for FIFA. Then once their usefulness was over (i.e. they tried to bring out about any real change) they exited stage right, where it all ended in tears when these poor souls realized that they had been used by an organization with a deeply entrenched culture of impunity.  

However, at the Budapest Congress once again FIFA and its leader Sepp Blatter, are speaking with great gravity about the problems of corruption and fixing. They are now bringing out a series of ‘reforms’ to purportedly fight these issues.

How to understand what is going on

The trick to figuring out whether the official FIFA announcements are actually good work or more public relations, is to analyze them as you would the new manager of Doncaster Rovers (or Würzburger FV or Lierse SK or fill-in-the-name-of-whichever-obscure-team-you-would-like). On his first day in charge the manager holds a press conference and says, ‘In two-years time the Rovers will be playing Real Madrid in the Champions League.’ Now as a sports fan/journalist you would automatically question that statement, saying something like, ‘Has the team been taken over by a Russian billionaire!? Where is the money coming from to buy the players that you need? How are you going to change the culture of from a lower league team to being top of your sport in two-years?’

In its purported fight against corruption, FIFA and its cast of comic opera characters effectively do the same thing. They strut about making public pronouncements, but they never actually do anything. However, unlike the fictitious Doncaster Rovers manager, they seemingly get to do it again and again with no real questions being asked.

As the “reforms” come out of the Budapest Congress, ask these questions of FIFA:

i) What resources, money and institutional backing have you given these reforms?

ii) What concrete timetable do you have to implement them?

iii) What independent agency will hold you accountable if you do not put these reforms in place?

iv) Why have no other Asian fixers been arrested?

v) Why has no top football official lost his job for tolerating the presence of fixers in the sport for so long?

vi) Why have you not put pressure (as you did to the Brazilians to allow alcohol in the stadium) on the Thai, Malay, Indonesian and Singaporean governments to bust up the fixers and, more importantly, arrest their politically connected patrons?

vii) If you got rid of Sylvia Schenk and Chris Eaton, how do we know that the situation will be any different now? What concrete changes have you shown?

viii) Finally, when will you release the names of the FIFA executives convicted of accepting bribes by a Swiss court in the ISL case?

Share

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Main | No Comments »

The Attempted Gruntling of Chris Eaton

Friday, February 24th, 2012

The blogosphere and my inbox are still cluttered with questions and e-mails about Chris Eaton’s departure from FIFA. To review, Mr. Eaton is a former Interpol officer who took over the fight against match-fixing at FIFA. Last month, he announced a series of tough-sounding projects to tackle corruption. Last week, came the shock news that he was leaving FIFA to take up a job with an anti-corruption agency in Qatar. He is, sadly, the latest in a series of anti-corruption executives that I have seen come and go in this field. However, what happened specifically to Mr. Eaton to make him leave?

First, it is clear that there was a significant cultural struggle between FIFA hierarchy and Mr. Eaton. In a BBC interview Eaton claims that he thinks FIFA is ‘naïve’ about the extent of match-fixing and that he was ‘uncomfortable’ with the widespread allegations of corruption connected to the organization. According to my sources, the truth is that almost all of Eaton’s projects (again, they were excellent ideas on paper) have been moved off to various FIFA committees, where they presumably will be quietly disarmed or shelved. In the words of one senior executive, “Eaton was left effectively alone, without resources.”

On the public side, however, Mr. Eaton has, in most interviews, been extremely loyal to the organization. FIFA has also issued a flattering statement about his work that said the usual clichés of ‘the-man-has-gone-but-his-work-will-continue’ nonsense. And yesterday, the head of the Qatari anti-corruption agency came out to say soothing things about both FIFA and the entire recruitment process. So overall what is going on to produce this disconnect? I believe that currently Mr. Eaton is being gruntled. Gruntling is the process where an organization takes an important ex-employee who may be disgruntled and who could embarrass the organization by complaining to the media and ensures that they are well-provided for. This is not outright corruption or bribery. Nor is it necessarily the stuff of confidentiality agreements and pensions, rather it can be more informal. It is the process where letters of references are positive, hallway conversations always encouraging, public expressions of esteem are traded back and forth. For Mr. Eaton to come out and clearly state what happened would be a public relations disaster for FIFA, their people know it so they are on a campaign to make sure that he does not say anything too bad about them.

However, there is a far more serious message in this situation than bad PR for FIFA. This controversy is a disaster for the fight against corruption and match-fixing. FIFA’s initiative against match-fixing is dead. There will be no effective or serious replacement for Mr. Eaton. Why would there be? The only people who will consider taking over Eaton’s job are the desperate and the deluded. Why would any credible candidate apply for a job when the last person’s ideas, plans and projects are widely considered to have been sidelined and he appears to have been, professionally, cut off at the knees? It is a career death-wish to accept such a position.

What about the new job that Eaton is moving to, the Qatari anti-corruption agency?

(Sound of Hill laughing. Slapping of thigh. Suspenders snapping. Ribs breaking, etc).

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! The sheer joy of covering stories on sports corruption and FIFA are the wonderful sub-plots that come out of the organization. You really could not make this stuff up. Last year, we had Sepp Blatter announcing that Placido Domingo, the opera singer, was going to be a lead helper in the fight against corruption. Now we have the news that there is a relatively obscure Qatari organization that will begin to lead the fight against sports corruption. What next? The Vladimir Putin Centre for Electoral Reform? So the Qataris want to stop corruption in sport do they? Right ho. How about investigating the possibility that the 2022 World Cup was bought by – wait for it – the Qataris? Those, after all, were the words of FIFA’s senior executive Jérôme Valcke who in a leaked e-mailed claimed that the Qataris had ‘bought the World Cup’. To be fair to Mr. Valcke, he later issued a statement saying that he had not meant the Qataris had bought the World Cup by bribing anyone, rather they had simply bought the World Cup by – well, by some previously unknown, but entirely legal process that FIFA had not been entirely clear about. This is an issue which concerns football fans around the world, and there are many fair-minded people who think that there was something wrong about the World Cup selection process – so how about a genuinely independent investigation into that affair? Otherwise, there will be many commentators who will doubt the credibility of the organization from the get-go.

This is the atmosphere that Mr. Eaton is now joining. Do I hold much hope for any real action from his new employers? No. Do I think that they will be able to do anything when FIFA has not fully backed any effective reforms or actions? No. Will they be able to make strong recommendations of the kind that sports officials nod wisely to in conference halls and then ignore in real life? Yes. Do I hope that I am wrong and that in six months Mr. Eaton and the Qataris will come riding back in a blaze of glory? Yes. Do I think that will happen? No.

The truly sad part of this whole story is that while Mr. Eaton is leaving, the situation for corruption has gotten far worse in football. The recent FIFPro (an international umbrella organization of football players union) survey of three-thousand current players indicates shockingly high-levels of corruption in many leagues. In almost one third of the countries that comprise FIFA there are police investigations into match-fixing. This is one of the troubling issues in this story. Match-fixing is beginning, in certain leagues, to become part of the system – part of the business plan of many clubs. If the organization that is supposed to be in charge of football world-wide does not move to protect it in a credible manner then who will?

There is one final issue that has been overlooked by almost all the media in following this story (except the excellent Haresh Deol) – Mr. Eaton’s allegation that there are certain senior Asian sports officials who are helping the match-fixers. The scandals in Turkey, China and Eaton’s own leaving tend to overshadow this matter, but it is the most serious issue of all. In my book ‘The Fix’ I write about how I got inside the gang that has been shown to be fixing matches all over the world. What they always told me was that they had protection from influential people in the Asian sports world. If you think about it, of course, they must have high-level protection – how else could they have continued for so long? It is not entirely clear who is protecting them, but the gang has, I believe, helped to corrupt matches at almost all levels of the game across the world. They will continue to do so, unless they are stopped. And so long as they continue to receive protection it will be very, very difficult to stop them.

Share

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Main | 1 Comment »

Eaton is Gone: the end of FIFA’s credibility on match-fixing

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Chris Eaton was supposed to be the new face of FIFA. Chris Eaton was supposed to represent all that was good and true in the organization that looks after world football. Chris Eaton is a tough-talking former police officer brought in from Interpol to save the world’s game from gangs of match-fixing criminals. Last month, he announced a series of measures that were to help him to do so, amnesties for anyone who came forward and confessed to fixing matches and an independent hotline for whistleblowers.

Last week, Sepp Blatter the head of FIFA announced that they were taking the issue of match-fixing very seriously. So they should. There are over fifty national police investigations into match-fixing in a bewildering range of countries, from international friendlies in South Africa and Zimbabwe to second division matches in Finland to the CONCACAF Champions League in El Salvador. The gangs are widespread and the threat of corruption in international football is growing.

However, today, I can confirm that Chris Eaton will be leaving FIFA in the next two months and many of his initiatives are being quietly shelved or sent to FIFA committees where they will move forward with glacial speed.

What will FIFA say about Eaton’s sudden departure? They will possibly say the usual platitudes, something like, ‘Mr. Eaton is leaving to pursue other activities.’

What will Chris Eaton say? He too will possibly say the usual platitudes, something like; ‘I want to spend more time with my family.’ Or ‘New opportunity, fresh pastures, exciting challenges, etc’.

What they will not say is that Chris Eaton had finished his task of rooting out match-fixing in international football. Heck! They cannot even say he began his task of rooting out match-fixing in international football. All the measures that were announced in the last few months – the proposed amnesty for players, the independent hotline for whistle-blowers – they have all been quietly shelved or will be moved to FIFA committees where they will wither away. Eaton is on his way out and FIFA’s credibility on this issue is in tatters.

Here is what I believe actually happened. My sources inside both Interpol and FIFA say that there is a battle going on inside FIFA. It is a room-by-room, desk-by-desk, hallway-by-hallway war. The fight is between the officials who want to bring the world football organization into the 21st century with proper professional standards, and the old-guard. The latter are officials who claim that the status quo has done very well so far and that there is no need to change it. There is also concern that with so many skeletons in the proverbial closet having an open season to discuss corruption might prove to be too much for FIFA (‘when can you get people to stop confessing?’)

Part of the public relations strategy of the old-guard is to bring in outsiders who will make loud pronouncements about the need for change, but when they actually ask for resources or serious reforms, find themselves isolated and alone.

Eaton was one of those people. He charged around the world trying to pretend that FIFA was conducting investigations, yet when he proposed a series of very sensible and practical solutions to preventing much of the corruption in international football – his proposals died.

It was the same pattern for Sylvia Schenk, the tough-talking, former athlete who is Transparency International’s point person for corruption in sport. A few months ago, she too had a brief flirtation with working with FIFA, and again, when she challenged the fundamental culture of FIFA, she left.

All in all this is a very worrying day for international football. With fifty national police investigations into match-fixing and so much confusion and controversy at FIFA, fans in every country can justifiably doubt the very credibility of much of the sport they are watching.

**

I add, as a footnote, my own experience with FIFA. I heard about this story last week from Interpol contacts. I confirmed it with FIFA sources. There were no other journalists close to the story. Then I followed proper, professional journalist protocol. I contacted the FIFA press department and asked them for a statement on this important issue. Three hours later a colleague at another news organization announced the story.

Do I believe that this timing was a coincidence? No.

Will I trust FIFA again? No.

Therefore, I suggest to all my colleagues: if in the future you have a story with FIFA, give them no more than an hour to formulate a response. It does not matter how serious or complex the issue, currently the work culture at FIFA is too toxic and poisonous to be trusted.

Share

Tags: , ,
Posted in Main | No Comments »

The Lapland Police Force, the Zimbabwean Football Association and What is Really Going On

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

It has been a long, hot summer of match-fixing scandals.

Count them: Zimbabwe, Finland, the Czech Republic, Nigeria, South Korea, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Poland, Malaysia (again) … the list goes on, but lets stop there for the moment. Suffice it to say that the scandals feature some of the top sports teams in the world and show clearly that the wave of match-fixing that I predicted is now deeply embedded in professional sports.

I have not had time to comment on all the scandals, I have been flying around the world consulting for some national governments and trying to put in place an effective education program for athletes. So now I am going to write and post three blogs over the next few days, their subjects are:

- What I believe FIFA is really doing
- What sports organizations should be doing
- What you as a sports fan could be doing to get rid of corruption in sports.

Here is the main update: the police have largely done their job – they have followed up on ‘The Fix’, there are half a dozen serious, criminal investigations going on around the world. If we push hard, we could clean-up international sports for a generation. But many sports organizations are desperately trying to run to the head of the parade so they can direct the investigations. They are desperately afraid that someone will start investigating the status quo. I do not want to exaggerate. This is a complicated story. There are lots of honest, decent sports officials who are genuinely concerned about corruption, but there is also lots of fear that the status quo will be upset and that other officials will be linked to the on-going investigations.

Let’s focus on FIFA. Ever since their controversial non-election this spring, they have been banging a drum about match-fixing.

So what is FIFA actually doing about the problem? In my opinion, at this moment, they are running a public relations campaign. They are not running an effective investigation against match-fixing. Repeat. I believe, at this moment, they are not running credible investigations. I hope in the future they will prove me wrong, but at this moment I think there is not a credible investigation going on.

Why not? Well first of all, FIFA has a massive credibility problem when it comes to corruption. There are not many disinterested people in the world who will believe that a current FIFA investigation would root out all match-fixing if it were found to be linked to a high-level sports official. Because of this perception, few players and referees will trust FIFA officials to give them the necessary information. Second, neither FIFA nor Interpol (which has been linked to FIFA) has the jurisdiction to investigate or make arrests. To stop these problems, they need to link to a credible national police force.

What FIFA is doing is having their head of security Chris Eaton fly around the world where he gives press conferences and media interviews. To be fair to Mr. Eaton, he has considerable manly charm. He looks exactly like the guy you want at your back during a bar fight in the Australian outback. You can understand why some of the tame sports journalists are so besotted that they forget their professional duty and do not ask any difficult questions. Mr. Eaton is also saying all the right things to the press. He has pointed out that there are fixing gangs that go around the world trying to corrupt matches in dozens of different countries. He has pointed out that many international friendly matches have been corrupted. He has pointed out that match-fixing gangs often import groups of players from Africa or the former Soviet sphere to win/lose matches on command in small leagues.

This is all true, and kudos for Mr. Eaton for saying what I revealed three years ago in ‘The Fix’. However, it is not an investigation. Credible investigations feature a careful collection of evidence. Credible investigations feature international arrest warrants and actual arrests. Credible investigations are linked with an appropriate, well-resourced national police force who will press the investigation to their natural conclusion even if top-level sports officials are also involved in the corruption.

Who has actually led the best investigation into corruption in international football? The Lapland Division of the Finnish National Police (I am not making this up) and the Zimbabwean Football Association. Both countries had the same gang fixing a whole range of their football matches. I have read their reports and both organizations did a very good job of investigating. However, you know things are really bad when you have to rely on the Zimbabwean Football Association to lead your fight against corruption and match-fixing.

FIFA’s great success in a summer of match-fixing scandals? Earlier this month, they issued lifetime bans for the referees involved in those strange friendly matches played last winter on a remote field in Turkey. The matches were watched by a couple of hundred people and they featured seven goals by seven penalties. Who was not sanctioned? Not a single sports official. Not a single Asian sports agent. Not a single person who actually organized, signed off or paid for those matches was arrested, banned or in anyway sanctioned by FIFA.

Let us be clear. FIFA is one of the richest and most powerful international organizations in the world. At the draw for the World Cup in July, the Brazilian government shut down the airspace over Rio de Janeiro for four hours, so there would be no sound problems during the draw. If they can spend 20-million-dollars for a one-day event (far more than Mr. Eaton’s entire budget), if they can shut down commercial air space over one of Latin America’s biggest air ports for four hours, then they can arrange international arrest warrants, organize an effective investigation and start implementing proper reforms.

What could be done at FIFA and other sports organizations to prevent corruption? So much, and so much of it so simple, that it boggles the mind that it has not be done. I will post those actions in the next few days and then in the next blog show how ordinary sports fans can get some of those reforms implemented – stay tuned.

Share

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Main | 1 Comment »