Fifa's João Havelange faces IOC inquiry into £610,000 bung allegation

Posted Friday, June 17, 2011 by theguardian.com

Fifa's João Havelange faces IOC inquiry into £610,000 bung allegation
The former Fifa president Joao Havelange, left, and his successor Sepp Blatter, right, with President Chirac at France 1998 World Cup final.

Fifa has suffered a fresh blow after the International Olympic Committee began an investigation into one of its highest officials over a BBC Panorama programme's allegations that he took bribes.

João Havelange, the honorary president of football's world governing body and an IOC member, is the subject of the inquiry being conducted by the IOC's ethics watchdog. The allegations centre on the 95-year-old Brazilian's relationship with Fifa's collapsed former marketing partner, International Sport and Leisure (ISL), during his 24 years as president of Fifa. So far Fifa has refused to open its own investigation into the alleged corruption.

In its Fifa: Football's Shame programme the BBC claimed last month: "Mr Havelange got a US$1m bung in 1997 [£610,000 at the time]. Sepp Blatter knew about it. He did nothing."

Havelange did not respond to the BBC's request for a response before the broadcast and it says he has not made contact since. The IOC's ethics commission has been in dialogue with BBC producers since last November, when a separate programme made claims that Issa Hayatou, the Confederation of African Football president and a Fifa vice-president, had taken a £10,000 payment from ISL. When the Guardian approached Hayatou for comment on the investigation during the Fifa congress in Zurich, he walked away.

The BBC is known to have passed to the IOC investigators its documentary evidence and source testimony regarding Hayatou, and the investigation now extends to Havelange. "The IOC takes all allegations of corruption very seriously and we would always ask for any evidence of wrongdoing involving any IOC members to be passed to our ethics commission," the Olympic governing body told the Guardian.

"The ethics commission launched its inquiry before Christmas last year, after the first BBC Panorama programme went on air. The commission has received supporting documents from the BBC and is now in the process of verifying the authenticity of the material that has been gathered so far.

"It istherefore pursuing its work and, although we cannot speak on its behalf as it is conducting its work independently, as a general principle they would always look at any available evidence of wrongdoing by IOC members while the process is ongoing."

Four members of Fifa's governing executive committee have been suspended over the past seven months after its own ethics commission looked into the allegedly corrupt activities in an investigation which has left football's rulers fighting to defend their organisation's reputation.

The Fifa executive committee members Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii have lodged appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport while the vice-president Jack Warner and Mohamed bin Hammam – who was a candidate for presidential election at Fifa – await a full inquiry by Fifa's ethics commission before discovering whether their temporary bans are extended permanently. There were reports last night that two other Fifa executive committee members were being investigated in connection with the Bin Hammam and Warner case.

However, the latest investigation is potentially the most damaging of all, since it is being conducted by an external body and takes in one of the most senior figures in the world game. Havelange said of last month's Fifa crisis: "Everyone is looking for mistakes because everyone wants to sit in that [president's] chair." When Havelange vacated it in 1998 he was succeeded by Blatter, who had been his closest confidant at Fifa, as his general secretary from 1981 and 1998.

This year Blatter, who is himself an IOC member courtesy of his Fifa role, has criticised the IOC – which went through its own corruption crisis during the bidding for the 2002 Winter Olympics – for a perceived lack of transparency. "The IOC is, I would say, a club," he said.

"In the 115 members of the IOC only 45 are directly linked to sport. All the others, the 70 members, are individually appointed members."