Qatar’s dirty player

THE man behind the Qatari soccer World Cup bid has been exposed.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter (R) is greeted by Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Mohammed bin Hammam (L) upon his ...

MOHAMED bin Hammam sat with quiet confidence in the front row of the auditorium as Sepp Blatter, president of the Federation Internationale de Football Association, tore open an envelope containing the name of the country chosen to host the 2022 World Cup.

Many hopes lay on this ­moment in December 2010. Britain’s Prince William and David ­Beckham were in the audience — having just lost England’s bid for the 2018 Cup — as were powerful figures from other countries bidding to stage soccer’s greatest tournament.

It was the climax of years of effort. After a frenzied final round of top-level lobbying in Zurich’s luxury hotels, members of FIFA’s executive committee (Exco) had voted that afternoon at their headquarters in the Swiss city.

Now, with the world watching on live television, their decision was imminent. Bin Hammam, 61, a dapper Qatari with silver hair and a neat goatee beard, was perhaps the calmest person in the room. He knew what was coming.

Behind him, a roar of delight erupted as Blatter declared the tiny, oil-rich Qatar the winner and its royal family leapt to their feet in celebration. Bin Hammam hovered respectfully in the background as Qatar’s ruling emir and his glamorous wife threw their arms around their fresh-faced son, 22-year-old Sheik Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Thani, the nominal leader of the Qatari bid team.

Around them, the great and good of world football exchanged disbelieving glances in stunned ­silence. How had a minuscule Gulf state, with virtually no football tradition or infrastructure, and searing summer temperatures of 50C, beaten footballing countries with much stronger bids?

No casual observer, watching bin Hammam as he waited modestly for the Qatari celebrations to subside before stepping forward to kiss young Sheik Mohammed discreetly on the cheek, would have guessed he was the man who held the answer.

Now a cache of millions of secret documents, leaked from the heart of world football by a senior FIFA insider, unmasks bin Hammam as the mastermind of an extraordinary covert campaign using slush funds and secret deals to seal the support Qatar needed.

They also contain correspondence that reveals some insiders realised what bin Hammam had done. Peter Hargitay, lobbyist for Australia’s rival bid, congratulated him on “a fine ­lesson in Machiavellian expertise ... remarkably executed, utterly ­accomplished”.

How did the Qatari Machia­velli do it? And how can his country — an immensely wealthy absolute monarchy ruled by the same family since the mid-19th century — cling on to the Cup now bin Hammam’s underhand game has been revealed?

The revelations threaten to engulf FIFA as it prepares to gather for its annual congress in Brazil in a week, before the opening match of this year’s World Cup in Sao Paulo on June 12.

Blatter, who has been FIFA’s president for 16 years, is under mounting pressure to order a rerun of the 2022 vote. He admitted last month it had been a “mistake” for football’s governing body to hand the tournament to Qatar after FIFA’s technical assessors said the fierce desert sun posed a “high risk” to players.

Blatter is also likely to face calls to resign. A growing number of influential figures in world football believe a new broom is needed to sweep out corruption at the heart of the sport’s governing body.

All the nations bidding to stage the World Cup sign up to rules of conduct that ban them, or any of their associates, from providing any of FIFA’s football officials with “any monetary gifts (or) any kind of personal advantage that could give even the impression of exerting influence, or a conflict of interest … in connection with the bidding process”. But too often the rules are treated with contempt.

Bin Hammam, a business magnate who made his fortune in the construction industry and property, had long been a powerbroker in the politics of world football when this scandal unfolded.

As bids to host the 2022 World Cup were being prepared six years ago, he was head of Qatari football, president of the Asian Football Confederation and a vice-president of FIFA, with a vote in picking the top bid. He portrayed himself as impartial, even privately promising he would vote for a rival bidder, Australia.

The Qatar 2022 bid team has always denied any connection with bin Hammam, insisting he was an “entirely separate” individual. The FIFA files chart his movements as he flew around the world, often on the emir’s private jet, meeting in secret with Exco members whose votes propelled Qatar to its victory. The FIFA files overflow with astonishing revelations, including details of how bin Hammam secured the support of Exco’s African members, who were crucial to Qatar’s success.

Using cash handouts and bank transfers from 10 slush funds controlled by his private company, bin Hammam made dozens of payments to the presidents of more than 30 national football associations who held sway over Africa’s votes.

To secure pledges of support from men he called his African “brothers” — and one formidable woman known as West Africa’s “Iron Lady” — he handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and transferred sums of bet­ween $US10,000 and $US200,000 into bank accounts.

He invited African delegations to a string of junkets in luxury hotels and showered them with gifts, lucrative benefits, private jet travel and extraordinary hospitality.

And he exploited his position as chairman of FIFA’s Goal Program, which funds football development in poor countries, to channel $US1.2 million into football federations of three key African Exco voters.

Allegations that Qatar bribed all four of Africa’s Exco members have dogged its bid since its shock victory. Before the vote, two former Exco members and a retired FIFA secretary-general had told Sunday Times undercover reporters the oil-rich Gulf state was offering the four Africans up to $US1.2m. Soon afterwards, a whistleblower from inside the Qatari bid approached the newspaper to claim that two of them had been paid $US1.5m each.

The allegations were published by a British parliamentary inquiry, but FIFA declined to investigate and the whistleblower retracted the allegations, later claiming to have done so after coming under pressure from Qatar.

In 2012, FIFA appointed ­Michael Garcia, a New York lawyer, to head its ethics committee and to look for evidence of wrongdoing. He is in Oman this week to interview members of the Qatari bid committee.

Sources say Garcia will not grill bin Hammam because he believes him to be unconnected with the World Cup bid. The FIFA files should make him change his mind. They contain the first evidence of direct payments to football ­officials in exchange for supporting the bid.

As Qatar denied any wrong­doing, Jim Boyce, the British member of FIFA’s executive committee, insisted the new evidence must be thoroughly examined by Garcia. Boyce said on Sunday he “would have no problem if the recommendation was for a re-vote”.

The evidence centres on bank transfer slips showing payments from 10 accounts controlled by bin Hammam’s private company — including his daughter’s personal bank account — to football bosses across Africa.

They are accompanied by emails that show how bin Hammam had offered payments at meetings in which he lobbied for support for Qatar. Other emails reveal how some senior figures repeatedly asked him for money.

Kalusha Bwalya, president of the Zambian FA and former international footballer, wrote to bin Hammam after a meeting in 2009: “As per our conversation, please Mr President if you could assist me with about 50 thousand dollars for my football association and personal expenditures. I hope to repay you in the near future, as the burden is little bit too hard for me at this moment.”

There is no evidence to suggest he repaid the debt. And in April 2011 he was again “a little thin on resources”, as he told bin Hammam’s assistant. “Please speak to the president for help.” Later that month, $30,000 dropped into his account.

Clearly, even a database this comprehensive cannot give the whole picture of bin Hammam’s operation. We do not know what was said in private conversations. But the FIFA files give an unprecedented insight into the nerve centre of the Qatari campaign.

After his success in winning the World Cup for Qatar, bin Hammam overreached himself by trying to replace Blatter as FIFA president and was toppled from all his football posts for bribery. Some other officials have since fallen in local scandals.

Football’s reaction to such embarrassments has always been to throw a culprit overboard and close ranks. Faced with the devastating evidence of the FIFA files, that game can no longer be played.

The Sunday Times