Mohammed bin Hammam facing the heat

Mohammed bin Hammam has been in the crosshairs of FIFA ever since he decided to challenge his old buddy Sepp Blatter for the presidency of the Zurich-based world football body last year. He was forced to withdraw from the presidential race after facing charges of trying to bribe CONCACAF voters to back his candidacy. He was subsequently found guilty of these charges and along with his alleged partner in crime, Caribbean strongman Jack Warner, was provisionally banned for life. That conveniently paved the way for the incumbent Swiss ‘monarch’ to be elected unopposed to the post in June 2011 for his fourth consecutive term.

However, in July, the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration of Sports set aside FIFA’s life ban on the Qatari official, ruling that there was insufficient evidence to hold him guilty while at the same time not giving him a clean chit either, and suggesting that FIFA could still conduct another proper investigation and bring him to book.

In the meantime, to keep the heat on bin Hammam, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) launched disciplinary proceedings against its former president around the same time over allegations of financial impropriety and even money laundering. The allegations pertain to a recent PriceWaterhouse Cooper (PwC) audit report which charged the president of receiving millions of dollars from firms linked to AFC contracts and spending thousands on himself and his family members on items such as a Bvlgari watch (for himself) and cosmetic dentistry (for his daughter).

The audit also raised questions over broadcast deals signed by bin Hamman on behalf of the AFC with the Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG) and its subsidiary World Sports Football, which were allegedly no-bid contracts and “considerably undervalued”, as well as with Al Jazeera, as reported by Associated Press and the UK’s Press Association among others. A payment was then reportedly made back to bin Hammam by a Saudi firm with stakes in WSG, it was alleged, charges which they have been denied by both WSG and bin Hammam. The audit also flagged various payments made to football officials from several countries, including those from neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh, and a certain Mr Jack Warner!

In response, bin Hammam, in a letter to 20 Asian football associations, has confirmed that he indeed made payments to various people but they came out of his own bank accounts and were driven by a desire to help those in need, including Zhang Jilong, the interim AFC president who ordered the PwC audit that set into motion the recent proceedings. “Jilong was one of those who came to me for financial support and I helped him with a significant amount from my personal account,” bin Hammam wrote in his blog. “I will leave him to explain the circumstances of this to you if he wishes.”

On the flip side, FIFA reopened an investigation into Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup (along with the 2018 champions to Russia). The probe is being carried out by the scam-tainted FIFA’s newly appointed corruption investigator Michael Garcia after an earlier panel had ruled that the awarding of the two events had been “insufficiently investigated”. Bin Hamman has been suspected of being associated with the bid although that has been denied by the Qatari bidders. So how far will this go? Is this the beginning of a move to reverse the result of one or both bids? Incidentally, FIFA’s top officials, including Mr Blatter and secretary general Jerome Valcke, have themselves been in the eye of the storm for serious misdemeanours.

Now comes the interesting part. The AFC hired the Louis Freeh group to assist in the investigation against its former chief. The former FBI director had probed the bribery allegations against bin Hammam for FIFA earlier and brought in a guilty verdict based on which he was banned. But CAS found that the probe was flimsy and therefore overturned the ban. So what’s cooking? Incidentally, Freeh’s suspected links to Opus Dei, the shadowy Roman Catholic organization, have been a mater of occasional conjecture in the American media.

In another twist to the tale, WSG has now initiated legal proceedings in Singapore against journalist James M. Dorsey to force him to reveal how he has come into possession of confidential AFC documents relating to the ongoing investigation and who his sources are, ‘Play the Game’ and others have reported. WSG has also reportedly threatened other journalists covering the issue with defamation proceedings. The hearing will commence September end.

The Singapore-based Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in the island nation, has been making sensational revelations on his blog ‘The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer´ about the contents of the PwC audit and related matters. He has also revealed how the Malaysian police were investigating a theft of the documents from the AFC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur that are linked to one particular payment, while also naming names and elaborating on the larger issues involved.

It will be interesting to see which the Singapore court will decide the issue. It remains to be seen if bin Hammam, who keeps getting suspended time and again from all footballing activity, can wriggle out of this one and how soon. The larger point is why it took a decade for his alleged misdemeanours to surface and whether he was the only official in the AFC to have his hands in the till…