30 November 2010

BBC investigative magazine programme Panorama has screened a report tonight based on a document obtained by journalist Andrew Jennings.

The document contains information relating to Swiss court hearings into the collapse of sports marketing company International Sport and Leisure (ISL) in 2001 and concerns payments allegedly made to FIFA Executives. Panorama alleges that three senior FIFA officials who will vote on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids received payments in the 1990s. Nicolas Leoz, President of CONMBEOL, Issa Hayatou President of CAF and Ricardo Teixeira, President of the Brazilian Football Confederation, received payments from ISL. Some details of the alleged bribes emerged in 2008, when six ISL managers were accused of misusing company money. Nicolas Leoz, of Paraguay, the head of South America's football confederation - was then named in court papers in connection with payments totaling US$130,000 (£83,000), but Panorama alleges it has since obtained a confidential ISL document which lists 175 secret payments. It shows Mr Leoz was paid a further US$600,000 (£384,000 using current conversions) in three installments of US$200,000. The ISL list shows a front company in Liechtenstein called Sanud received 21 payments totalling US$9.5m (£6m). Mr Teixeira was closely linked to Sanud by an inquiry of the Brazilian senate in 2001. It found that funds from Sanud had been secretly channelled to Mr Teixeira through one of his companies. With the British Prime Minister David Cameron travelling to Zurich for the final presentation of the winners of the bids to host the World Cup tournaments for 2018 and 2022, the publication of the report shows impeccable timing by the BBC and Jennings, a comrade of former FA chairman Lord Triesman, to score a political point even at the expense of England’s bid on which millions of pounds have already been spent. Jennings, a FIFA gadfly, may have had the information on the alleged bribes for some time, but the BBC has defended the timing of Panorama, saying the programme is in the public interest. However, Andy Anson, the head of England's 2018 bid, told the BBC he was "disappointed with the timing" of the programme. It is certainly not going to win us any votes so we just have to see what happens tonight and move on," he said. He added that members of the FIFA executive committee worked closely with each other "and of course if one of them gets hurt the others feel it. That's just life".{jcomments on}

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