After having survived one of the sporting world’s biggest corruption scandals, it was presumed that FIFA had resurfaced cleaner and much improved and that the crisis was long behind it.
But FIFA President Gianni Infantino has taken the world’s governing body of football back to its darkest days after deciding not to reappoint ethics chiefs Hans-Joachim Eckert and Cornel Borbély. Swiss investigator Borbély and German judge Eckert were not named among those proposed for the next four-year term of the independent ethics committee. The two ethics committee chiefs wanted to stay on past their current mandate but will now be replaced.
It is a dramatic decision that threatens to undermine FIFA’s plans to push the message that its house is now in order. The two men had presided over some of the biggest cases in FIFA’s history, banning former president Sepp Blatter, his right-hand man Michel Platini and a host of other executives.
FIFA’s decision not to reappoint Eckert and Borbély means an effective end to the reform process, the pair say. And right they are, even though it is ironic that it was their work in removing the previous regime of Blatter that opened the door for Infantino to become president last year in the first place. Are the pair in effect paying for being too successful in bringing the corrupt heads of world football to justice? FIFA’s leading officials seem to have decided that Borbély and Eckert are surplus to requirements.
The FIFA Council decisions were announced in Bahrain two days before the 67th FIFA annual congress. In Bahrain, FIFA was hoping to announce its continued efforts to distance itself from the series of damaging corruption scandals of recent years. It is claiming the pair were removed to make way for new blood but one cannot help but conclude the decision is politically motivated.
Infantino inherited an organization that was rocked by corruption on a massive scale. While the numbers of now former FIFA officials who have pleaded guilty is well over 15, the organization does not seem to have learned much from the experience, in the way of transparency or accountability going forward. FIFA should understand that its reputation requires extensive rebuilding. It must acknowledge the gravity of the crisis that assailed the organization nearly two years ago and how misconduct from former football officials has tarnished its public image. But this non-reappointment puts an end to the reform efforts that will inevitably lead to a renewed loss of trust and further hurt FIFA’s already tarnished image.
Hundreds of cases of alleged wrongdoing, some involving senior officials, were being looked into by Eckert and Borbély before they were ousted. Their successors will now have to familiarize themselves with the dossiers and the processes, leading to long delays in current investigations and proceedings, and complicate the prosecution of violations.
As it is, FIFA is struggling to persuade the world that it has ended its culture of corruption. This decision will merely make matters worse and court further public derision. The work of a credible and independent Ethics Committee is an important part of the FIFA reforms whose goal was to restore the trust of the public and other stakeholders. However, FIFA’s integrity is once again in jeopardy and with it the future of the game.
FIFA is punishing the very persons the organization selected to help it clean house. When an organization does all it can to avoid investigation, up to and including firing those charged with internal investigations, only to replace the investigators with perhaps more pliant operatives, then who is exercising the oversight to restore the world’s faith in the governing body of the world’s most popular sport? Removing this pair during continuing investigation of corruption in world soccer will lead to an inevitable loss of trust in FIFA.
