Fresh corruption claims about TV rights cloud Qatar’s World Cup bid

Qatar secretly offered $400m to FIFA just 21 days before it awarded the 2022 World Cup to the tiny desert nation.

Qatar’s emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Emir of Qatar, with the World Cup trophy. Picture: AP

The state of Qatar secretly offered $400 million to FIFA just 21 days before world football’s governing body decided that the 2022 World Cup would be held in the tiny ­desert country, leaked documents show.

The files, seen by The Sunday Times, show executives from the Qatari state-run broadcaster Al Jazeera signed a TV contract making the huge offer as the bidding campaigns to host the World Cup were reaching a climax.

The contract included an unprecedented success fee of $100m that would be paid into a desig­nated FIFA account only if Qatar was successful in the World Cup ballot in 2010. It represented a huge conflict of interest for FIFA and a breach of its own rules as Al Jazeera was owned and controlled by Qatar’s emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who was the driving force behind the bid.

The Sunday Times has also seen a copy of a second secret TV rights contract for a further $480m that was offered by Qatar three years later — shortly before FIFA cut short its long-running investi­gation into corruption in the bidding process and suppressed its findings.

This contract is now part of a bribery inquiry by Swiss police.

It means FIFA was directly ­offered almost $1 billion by the Qatari state at crucial times in its efforts to host and retain the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

Experts say it would be difficult to justify the amount paid by the Qatari broadcaster for the television rights deals on purely commercial terms. It is thought to be five times the sum previously paid for such deals in the region.

The disclosures add to mounting evidence that Qatar effectively bought the right to host the world’s biggest sporting competition, which will be held in Doha in three years.

The $400m offer ahead of the vote was a clear breach of FIFA’s anti-bribery rules, which forbid entities with links to the bid from making financial offers to the sports body in connection with the bidding process.

FIFA, which claims to have reformed itself following scandals of the past, is to receive a multi-­million-dollar payment including a portion of the $100m success fee next month under the contract’s terms.

Damian Collins, the chairman of the digital, culture, media and sport committee, said FIFA must freeze the Al Jazeera payments and launch an investigation into the contract that “appears to be in clear breach of the rules”.

The Qatar state was mobilised to help with the bid in a circular ­issued by the emir’s governing ­office, when the bidding campaigns began in March 2009.

The $400m contract offered by Al Jazeera for the right to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in the Middle East and north Africa was a record sum and unique because none of the other TV rights deals was agreed before the host countries were chosen.

A key clause contained a huge success fee linked to the ballot. It says: “In the event the 2022 competition is awarded to the state of Qatar, Al Jazeera shall, in addition to the ... rights fee, pay to FIFA into the designated account the monetary amount of $100m.”

The success fee is characterised in the contract as an extra payment towards the costs of “broadcast production”, even though this work of filming and editing is normally paid by FIFA.

It adds that the uplift is also “in recognition of the higher value to Al Jazeera” of the competition being held in its home country.

Such TV rights deals are normally signed off by FIFA’s executive committee (Exco). On the eve of the vote, then FIFA president Sepp Blatter told Exco members they would receive a bonus of $200,000 each because that year’s World Cup was a financial success. The next day it was the emir who clutched the World Cup on stage in Zurich to celebrate Qatar’s victory in the ballot to host the 2022 World Cup.

The next week, Blatter and Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s general secretary, signed the $400m TV rights contract. The Qataris made a $6m down-payment to FIFA within 30 days of it being signed.

The second contract, seen by The Sunday Times, was made by beIN Media Group, Al Jazeera’s spin-off. It also presented a conflict of interest as FIFA’s ethics investigator, Michael Garcia, was in the final stages of his inquiry into corruption around the 2010 ballot.

FIFA would later hail his work as having cleared Qatar of wrongdoing. He quit, saying his findings were misrepresented.

A beIN spokesman said of the TV rights deals that “no wrong­doing has been found concerning our involvement”.

The Sunday Times