The Ugly Game: The Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup

by Heidi Blake

  When Bin Hammam wanted to slip someone in world football a discreet sweetener, he had a system. Often it was merely a matter of instructing Gan to wire the money from his sundry account at the AFC under some flimsy football-related pretext, but there were times when a less traceable route was prudent. Thankfully, over in Doha his accounts staff at Kemco operated a network of ten funds which provided the perfect cover for clandestine transactions. The accounts were generally marked for commercial mundanities such as ‘real estate’, ‘transport’, ‘retention’ and ‘overheads’. Bin Hammam’s personal bank account, and another in the name of his adult daughter, Aisha, were also operated by the Kemco staff to make payments to football bosses.

  When Bin Hammam wanted to show an influential official some generosity, his clerks would often be ordered to make a transfer from one of these funds directly into the personal account of the individual in question. At other times, the money might go into the account of the football federation the official controlled, or be paid to a spouse, son or daughter. Whatever the route, the reference on these payments was always the same: it went down in the Kemco ledger as ‘business promotion’. Once the money had been paid, the accounts staff would email a copy of the bank transfer slip to Bin Hammam’s private office in Doha’s Olympic Tower. Job done.

  The man opening the emails from the Kemco accounts team in the skyscraper on the Corniche was a pivotal figure. This was Bin Hammam’s right-hand man, and he was closer to the Qatari billionaire than the trio of women he trusted at the AFC could ever hope to be. His name was Najeeb Chirakal. From the private office overlooking the West Bay where Bin Hammam had once watched the riggers play, Chirakal supervised all of the billionaire’s affairs. He was in his fifties, having left his home in the Keralan backwaters of India to come to Doha decades earlier. Just like Bin Hammam, he could remember the dusty old city before the boom. Everybody liked Najeeb. He was small, button-nosed and bespectacled, with a shy smile under his bushy moustache. There was something homey about this quietly cheerful man in flannel trousers and a baggy jacket: you couldn’t help but warm to him. He knew his place as a migrant worker in Qatar and he was always humble, but the high degree of trust the billionaire football boss had placed in him lent him a special status in the capital. Chirakal was the gatekeeper. If you wanted to get to Bin Hammam, you had to go through him.

  It was a key part of Chirakal’s job to oversee the payments that were made to football officials from the funds operated by Kemco, and he kept a tight ship. Once the money had been transferred and he had received a scanned copy of the payment slip, he would forward the document to the official in question as proof that the money was winging its way speedily into their account. Bin Hammam rarely sent emails, leaving Chirakal in charge of his inbox. The scanned payment slips he sent to the officials were always accompanied by some kind words on behalf of his boss.

  Chirakal was going to have his hands full now the World Cup campaign was seriously underway, and the sly requests from the African football officials who had so enjoyed their visit to Kuala Lumpur were beginning to trickle in. The trusted trio at AFC headquarters were going to be just as busy: some of the dignitaries were proving particularly persistent in their entreaties. Izetta Wesley had taken to peppering the president with ‘urgent’ requests for financial help for her federation since being so blown away by the hospitality she received in Kuala Lumpur, but she was far from the most brazen.

  That, undoubtedly, was Seedy Kinteh. The president of the Gambian FA had enjoyed visiting Malaysia in June, wandering around Malacca in his satin dashiki, and he had been particularly pleased with the bundle of cash and gifts he received. But at least four of his fellow visitors had done even better out of the visit, persuading their host to ask Gan to wire them extra money after they returned home. Seedy wanted a slice of that pie.

  He was saving up to buy a new car to drive around football projects in the Gambian countryside, and he thought Bin Hammam might be able to help. In an email to a senior official at the AFC on 17 July 2008, he explained that he was writing ‘to remind the President through you about our Vehicle problem that we had earlier discussed’. The official was not part of the inner sanctum, so he was flummoxed by Seedy’s constant demands. In desperation he forwarded the email to Jenny Be with the note: ‘Please see below another reminder (the 5th!) from Seedy Kinteh of Gambia. Kindly advise if the President would like me to reply to him and what should I tell him. He also called me almost every 2 days.’ Be told the official to ‘ignore it at the moment’. But Seedy would not have to wait long for his pay day.

  The first junket in Kuala Lumpur had been such a roaring success that Bin Hammam decided to host a second that October. Meshadi was duly dispatched back to AFC headquarters to flash his most winning smile at the secretaries and extract another stack of dollar bills, this time totalling $130,000. On this visit the African football chiefs had been invited to bring their wives and daughters, with Meshadi instructed to present the guests and each of their companions with packages of $5,000 when they landed on 15 October. A set of gifts was also prepared for all 40 visitors and packed up in Nike hold-alls, which were left in their five-star hotel rooms. This time the delegates were treated to a private cruise on the vast blue expanse of Putrajaya Lake. Moving through the crowd on deck was Amadou Diallo, and time was made for each of the delegates to have a private meeting with Bin Hammam.

  The visit was just as effective as the last, and Bin Hammam could once again congratulate himself on having bolstered his alliances with men close to Issa Hayatou, whose backing was essential to victory. The Cameroonian was not there in person on this trip, but his influence was felt. Afterwards, Anjorin Moucharafou of Benin, the CAF executive committee member who had a payment wired to him by Gan after the first junket, emailed his host in French: ‘Thank you for all the attention you paid to me during the stay of my wife and I. I was also very flattered by the attention you paid to promoting World football in general and Africa in particular. Your commitment to a partnership for the benefit of Africa alongside President Issa Hayatou gives me a positive feeling in building our future actions.’

  Another powerful CAF official, Togolese General Seyi Memene, Hayatou’s vice president, also wrote to Bin Hammam later that month. He asked the Qatari billionaire to fund a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia for himself and his wife. Bin Hammam duly ordered Chirakal to arrange a transfer of $22,400 to cover flights, hotels and living expenses for the general and Mrs Memene.

  The requests continued to roll in. The president of the Swaziland FA and former senator Adam ‘Bomber’ Mthethwa emailed to thank Bin Hammam for an ‘unforgettable’ visit to Kuala Lumpur. He went on, ‘I am in dire need of finance in the region of $30,000. This arises from the fact that I’ve just retired from politics and my gratuity will only be paid to me when I reach the age of 55 in 2010.’ Bin Hammam forwarded the email to Jenny Be. She knew what to do.

  Phase one of Bin Hammam’s campaign was gathering pace nicely and he was feeling increasingly confident of the support of his African brothers. He would need them to lean on the confederation’s four voters on his behalf, but all that could follow in good time.

  By the end of 2008, Qatar’s intention to launch a bid to host the 2022 World Cup was as good as public, but Bin Hammam was having to practise his poker face. As the president of the AFC, it would be unseemly for him to push his own country’s bid at the expense of the confederation’s other three contenders – Australia, South Korea and Japan. What’s more, he knew that if he was going to win he would have to play dirty and that meant keeping a low profile. The Emir was lining up his handsome young son, Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, to front Qatar’s official bid committee, and the royals had to keep their hands as clean as their pristine white dishdashas.

  So when his old friend Peter Hargitay began to probe him about Qatar’s bid, Bin Hammam had to play dumb. Hargitay was a man who was steeped in the mire of FIFA like no other. The moustachioed Swiss-Hungar
ian lobbyist, spin doctor and fixer had worked for years as a special advisor to Sepp Blatter, and Bin Hammam had employed him in the past too. He was not picky about his clients.

  Early in his career in 1984, Hargitay had represented Union Carbide Corporation after the Bhopal disaster in India, in which more than 500,000 people living in shanty towns were exposed to a cyanide leak from the company’s plant. It was the world’s worst industrial catastrophe and Union Carbide badly needed to clean up its image – though it was less interested in cleaning up the thousands of tonnes of toxic waste in the soil and water which continue to cause terrible birth defects in Bhopal’s babies today. He was just the man to make the best of a bad job, and would later joke about how his spin campaign for the petrochemicals giant got his career off ‘with a bang’. Next, he went to work for Marc Rich, the multi-billionaire American commodities trader who boasted of busting UN oil sanctions against apartheid South Africa and had been hiding out in Switzerland since the mid-1980s after being indicted for breaking a US trade embargo with Iran and tax evasion on an unprecedented scale. Hargitay liked a challenge, and he had never met a rich and powerful man he didn’t admire. It was the perfect assignment.

  He prided himself on being able to fish his clients out of difficulty, and he learned from first-hand experience how to get out of a bad rap when he twice got himself acquitted of cocaine trafficking in the 1990s. By the turn of the millennium he had become a master of the dark art of ‘reputation management’, and he was looking for a new berth. Where better for a man with Hargitay’s many dubious talents than FIFA headquarters? He went to work as a spin doctor for Sepp Blatter, helping the president slither through corruption scandal after corruption scandal and come up smelling of roses every time. Hargitay had found his spiritual home in the murky world of football administration.

  The lobbyist operated in mysterious ways. He had an army of pet journalists under his spell, ready to attack his enemies or lionise his allies when he gave the word. He knew about how to spy on people, or smear them. He’d take your money to fix votes in an election or spin a disaster into a PR triumph. He was an invaluable asset to anyone trying to manoeuvre their way through FIFA’s back-corridors, so he would doubtless play a pivotal role in the World Cup bidding race. The whole business was sure to be flush with consultancy cash, and Hargitay was not one to miss such an opportunity. So he quit his job as Blatter’s special advisor in December 2007 and prepared to enter the fray.

  England’s 2018 bid team had sniffed around Hargitay early on and briefly hired him as an advisor, but the relationship had ended quickly. The rumour was that the spinner had advised them to earmark substantial funds to be used to curry favour with the FIFA Exco members, and the chairman of the bid, Lord Triesman, had baulked at the suggestion and shown him the door. Now he was in the pay of the Australian team, which was about to launch their country’s bid for the 2022 World Cup. He might be an old friend, but for the purposes of this campaign Hargitay had become a direct rival. He could not be trusted. But Bin Hammam valued the cunning old lobbyist’s opinion, so he read the withering email which arrived in December 2008 with some dismay.

  ‘Dear Brother,’ Hargitay wrote. ‘Attached a story [about Qatar’s World Cup bid] going around the globe right now. I cannot imagine how Qatar can be serious . . . I honestly believe that they should receive honest and straight advice: I fear they have not a chance to win this. The temperatures are just too forbidding.’ Hargitay ended by saying he had sounded out a fellow lobbyist, who shared his view that Qatar’s chances were ‘virtually nil’. He recommended that Bin Hammam advise ‘the Emir not to pursue it’. Bin Hammam knew that was not an option. He had continually warned about the temperatures till he was blue in the face, but the Emir was resolute. Qatar’s ruler wanted the World Cup come hell or high water, and a little summer heat wasn’t going to stand in his way. Of course, Bin Hammam had anxieties about this that he just couldn’t shake, but he was not about to share them with Hargitay.

  So his response was sphinx-like: ‘Dear brother . . . Thank you for the information, but I have no clue!!’

  Qatar finally declared its hand officially when it registered a formal ‘expression of interest’ in bidding for the World Cup with FIFA in February 2009. A fortnight before, Bin Hammam had been in Zurich with Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Thani, the president of the Qatar FA, and his bagmen Meshadi and Diallo. Days later, Bin Hammam was reunited with his African brothers when he travelled to CAF’s annual congress in Lagos, Nigeria. He had Meshadi at his side, and was also accompanied by Diallo who had €3,000 pocket money transferred into his bank account in the days beforehand. Chirakal took special care to ensure that the bag-man was accommodated in the same hotel where the delegates were staying, for easy access, and it was his job to get the drinks in.

  The same month, Bin Hammam reached out to Sepp Blatter. Despite his very public promise in June to support the president in the next election, and the gushing letter of thanks he had received, he couldn’t help but feel there had been a cooling of relations in the months since. Qatar had now made clear its intention to campaign for the World Cup and was preparing to submit its formal bid registration form the following month. It would be ruinous to lose Blatter’s support at this crucial stage. So Bin Hammam wrote to his old brother-in-arms that February, tentatively enquiring as to whether Qatar could still count on his good will. His message read simply: ‘Hi President, I am looking for Friends. Are you still one of them? Kind regards, Mohamed.’ History does not relate if he received a reply.

  Bin Hammam had other reasons to take heart, though. A month later, when Qatar met the deadline to hand in its bid registration form to FIFA on 16 March, the rewards of the groundwork he had so carefully laid in Africa were immediately apparent. Fadoul Houssein, the president of the Djibouti FA, emailed him the same day, ready to sign up for the fight. ‘How much I am pleased with you when I heard this news with our brother Diallo,’ he wrote. ‘I am ready to go with you to the end. I’m sure that Somalia, Comoros . . . Sudan, Yemen and Djibouti will support us. Count on me I’m already starting the war and I am sure you will win.’

  Houssein was right: the football leaders of those countries all became close allies of Bin Hammam and their associations were rewarded for their leaders’ loyalty. Houssein himself solicited payments of more than $30,000 from the Qatari to fund an expensive course of medical treatment for his general secretary over several months at a private hospital in Bangkok. The Somali FA had $100,000 paid into its bank account the following year, while the Sudan association asked for help paying for their general assembly, and Bin Hammam’s staff asked them to provide their bank details. Yemen was paid just under $10,000, while Bin Hammam’s staff arranged another bank transfer to the Comoros.

  So by the time Qatar formally launched its World Cup campaign, Bin Hammam had already enlisted the ground troops in Africa who would help march the bid to victory.

  Four

  A Corrupt Official Called Seedy

  Two figures sat hunched forward in the wan glow of their computer screens, their faces furrowed in concentration. Only the pale shafts of spring sunlight slanting through chinks in the blinds penetrated the gloom. This anonymous attic room above a boarded-up high-street shop was the perfect hide-out. No one would think to look here, in this obscure little northern suburb that could have been anywhere. The two figures were Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake – together, The Sunday Times Insight team – and this attic room was the nerve-centre of their investigation into Mohamed bin Hammam’s corrupt World Cup campaign.

  Through draughty windows which never quite closed came the comfortable chatter of the blue-rinse brigade of elderly ladies who congregated each morning outside the café across the road. The only sound within emanated from giant computer servers whirring away endlessly in the corner as they churned through tens of thousands of terrabytes of data. It was March 2014, and Calvert and Blake had been camped out in the attic for two weeks already. They we
re here to trawl through many millions of highly sensitive documents held by a whistleblower from inside FIFA who wanted to lift the lid on corruption in the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. The source was rightly cautious: he had been introduced to the journalists by a mutual acquaintance at a London hotel just a month before, and he didn’t trust strangers easily. He wasn’t prepared to allow them to access his documents from anywhere other than this secure room, where their activities were monitored by two CCTV cameras mounted on the wall. The documents were to remain on computers controlled by the source and were not to be sent electronically outside of the room until the work was finished.

  The deal was clear-cut: Calvert and Blake would spend three months working on the story in secret and they would do justice to the material by publishing a full and detailed account of the investigation in The Sunday Times at the end. The source’s identity would be protected, and any documents the journalists published on the newspaper’s website with his agreement at the end of their work would be redacted and stripped of identifying metadata. If any material leaked before that, if their whereabouts became known or if the source’s identity was blown, then the deal was off.

  The stakes were high. So the journalists could not tell anyone other than their senior editors and the newspaper’s lawyers where they were, or what they were doing. Their families and friends were, for the most part, kept in the dark. Blake and Calvert simply disappeared one morning, and their colleagues at The Sunday Times had no idea where they had gone. In their absence, rumours began to circulate back in London that the Insight team had been disbanded. The journalists received concerned phone calls and emails from their fellow reporters, and media bloggers began to get in touch to try to find out what had become of them. But their lips had to stay sealed.