by Heidi Blake
Bin Hammam needed to maintain a decent distance from the bid team, mindful as he was of the need to keep his covert activities separate from their public-facing campaign. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t give them the benefit of his wisdom behind the scenes. He had four decades of experience under his belt in football administration, and these young pretenders had no idea how the game really worked. Sheikh Mohammed, Hassan Al-Thawadi and their staff were on a steep learning curve, and they looked up to Bin Hammam. He spent many hours advising them on how to sell the country’s official bid to the world.
One way of getting noticed was to sponsor big events where the bid could plaster its branding over every surface, make speeches promoting the Qatar 2022 campaign and send its ambassadors out to work the room and whisper in ears. Where better to start than with the AFC’s own annual awards dinner? The bid pledged $100,000 to bankroll the flashy AFC event in Kuala Lumpur on 24 November, and the entire committee attended the gala led by their royal figurehead Sheikh Mohammed.
Hassan Al-Thawadi took the opportunity to hold a press conference before the dinner announcing that the Saudi player Sami Al Jaber had signed up as an official ambassador for the bid, and the Middle Eastern football star adorned Qatar’s table that evening. The room was packed with influential Asian football officials, many of whom were growing accustomed to enjoying Qatari hospitality and patronage by now.
There was Rahif Alameh, the president of the Lebanese FA, who received an unexplained payment of $100,000 into his personal bank account wired by staff at Kemco earlier that summer. Also present was Mari Martinez, the president of the Philippines FA, who had money transferred into his wife’s bank account from one of the Kemco slush funds in July. And then there was Ganbold Buyannemekh, president of the Mongolia FA, whose daughter’s university education was being funded by Bin Hammam. It was all part of the service. The only thing he asked in return was loyalty. That evening, the guests were treated to a sparkling display of traditional dance and acrobatics as they tucked into the banquet, this time courtesy of Qatar’s official World Cup bid committee rather than their usual benefactor, Bin Hammam.
Afterwards, when the invoice for the Qatar bid’s sponsorship was paid to accounts staff at the AFC, the director of finance Amelia Gan fired off a wry email to a colleague. ‘I’m pleased to inform that we received USD99,9953 from Qatar today,’ she wrote. ‘I will collect the shortage of USD47 from President. hahahah.’
By the end of the year, the draw for the South Africa World Cup was fast approaching, and Bin Hammam’s focus on Africa had rubbed off on the young leaders of Qatar’s official bid committee. Hassan Al-Thawadi had decided to make his own fledgling attempt to win hearts and minds across the continent with the power of his chequebook. The bid’s chief executive favoured a subtler approach than the cash handouts, junkets and slush-fund bungs that had worked so well for his experienced mentor.
Rather than going to the continent’s football officials directly, he had decided to make overtures to a single man whom he thought had the power to unite all of Africa behind him. So it was that Al-Thawadi contacted Desmond Tutu, the first black archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel peace prize winner, beloved and revered for his social-rights campaigning and vigorous opposition to apartheid. Tutu had lent his weight to South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 World Cup, and Al-Thawadi hoped he could be persuaded to do the same for Qatar. The dynamic young bid chief got in touch offering a donation of $100,000 in exchange for Tutu’s support. By the autumn he thought they had a deal. Al-Thawadi wrote to Tutu in October saying: ‘How grateful we are for your kind support and your acceptance to be an Ambassador for the Qatar 2022 Bid.’ His letter concluded: ‘In deep gratitude for your kind support, it will be the Qatar 2022 Bid’s great pleasure to make a donation of $100,000 to be divided, as you suggested, between your two chosen humanitarian charities.’
The money was to go to the Tygerberg Children’s Hospital in Cape Town and the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. But while the hospital received its $50,000 donation a month after Al-Thawadi’s letter, the money that had been promised to Tutu’s own HIV foundation was not immediately forthcoming. A fortnight after the Tygerberg hospital had cashed its cheque from Qatar, Al-Thawadi received a nasty shock. The Australia 2022 bid wheeled out their new ambassador on the eve of the World Cup draw in Cape Town, and it was none other than Archbishop Tutu wearing the yellow shirt of the country’s national team, the Socceroos. The Nobel laureate met Australia’s bid chief Lowy at the Tygerberg Hospital and promised the billionaire his unstinting support. Qatar had been outbid. Its Australia rivals had donated a million South African Rand ($130,000) to Tygerberg in exchange for Tutu’s backing.
It was a humiliating moment for Qatar’s official bid committee, and Bin Hammam might have been forgiven for wondering what the youngsters were playing at as he watched from the wings. Donations to charity and overtures to archbishops were all well and good, but that wasn’t how a World Cup vote was won. Yes, Tutu was well respected across Africa, but did Al-Thawadi really think the continent’s football officials were going to vote with their hearts? Football administration was a hard-headed game. The young tyros had a lot to learn about the way the sport really worked at the top if they thought charity would get them anywhere.
While Al-Thawadi was dilly-dallying with Tutu on the eve of the Cape Town draw, Bin Hammam had been busy doing deals with a real member of African football royalty. He had met Kalusha Bwalya – the former Zambian footballing superstar known as ‘King Kalu’ to his countrymen – at the end of October to find out what he could do to win the influential official’s loyalty. The strapping Zambian was one of the continent’s all-time greatest players, having been named African Footballer of the Year in 1988 and shortlisted for FIFA World Player in 1996. Now he was running his country’s football association.
Bwalya had built up his powerbase as a member of FIFA’s football committee, chaired by the UEFA president Michel Platini, and he sat alongside Africa’s four voters as a member of CAF’s powerful executive committee. This was a man with real influence, and Bin Hammam wanted to have him on side. After the meeting in October, Bwalya wrote to the AFC boss thanking him for his time and reminding him of his obligations. ‘As per our conversation, please Mr President if you could assist me with about 50 thousand Dollars for my Football Association and personal expenditures,’ his email said. The Zambian FA chief said he hoped to repay the money one day, and provided his bank details.6 On 2 December, the day after Tutu’s humiliating defection to Australia, Najeeb Chirakal emailed Bwayla a bank transfer slip showing that $50,000 had been paid into his personal bank account from one of the slush funds operated by Kemco. That was how you did business in world football.
As the Kemco cash was winging its way into Bwalya’s account, Bin Hammam was sipping mint tea at 30,000 feet on his private jet en route to Cape Town. His bagmen Amadou Diallo and Mohammed Meshadi as well as his AFC office director Jenny Be all flew in as part of his entourage, and Najeeb Chirakal arranged for them to pick up $10,000 from his FIFA account as spending money for the trip. The group stayed at the five-star Westin Grand Hotel, with panoramic views of Table Mountain and the emerald waters of the adjoining bay.
The leaders of Qatar’s bid committee were also in South Africa. They knew this was a big moment, and they had opened their coffers accordingly. The bid had bought up a major presence at the SoccerEx conference in Johannesburg where the great and the good of world football congregated days before the draw ceremony. They had shelled out for display stands boasting flashy interactive videos and handed out Arabic coffee, promotional paperweights and Qatar 2022 t-shirts. Sepp Blatter toured the vast halls of the Sandton Conference Centre flanked by his CIA-style security detail in their suits and shades, with the press pack swarming after him whichever way he turned.
All the bidding countries were in the scrum at SoccerEx, trying to collar the FIFA president and key members of his Exco for one-to-one meetings and photo
opportunities, but Qatar and Russia had spent by far the most money on showcasing their bids on the conference floor. Sheikh Mohammed was in town, with a whirlwind media programme to get through. The bid’s communications team had put together a list of friendly journalists for him to speak to. The briefing document he was handed explained that they had: ‘Identified accredited media that, by virtue of their geographical reach and status, may be read/viewed/listened to by certain FIFA ExCo members – for example list includes key Brazilian, Nigerian, and German media that could help reach Teixeira, Adamu and Beckenbauer.’
When the SoccerEx conference stands came down, football’s global boss class jetted across to Cape Town for the spectacular show that had been laid on to mark the official World Cup draw. The streets outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre were a riot of colour with live music and parades as thousands gathered to watch the ceremony on giant screens. The event was beamed around the planet to an audience of 150 million people in 200 countries as the South African President Jacob Zuma joined Blatter on stage to welcome the world at the start of the 90-minute live broadcast. Nelson Mandela, the country’s former president and hero of the struggle against apartheid, delivered a pre-recorded message about football’s power ‘to inspire and unite’. He said: ‘The people of Africa learned the lessons of patience and endurance in their long struggles for freedom. May the rewards brought by the FIFA World Cup prove that the long wait for its arrival on African soil has been worth it.’
Inside the auditorium, a privileged elite of 3,000 dignitaries and journalists sat to watch the ceremony at first hand. The audience was dotted with some of the world’s most dazzling football celebrities; from David Beckham and Franz Beckenbauer to Michel Platini and Roger Milla. The apartheid-beating Nobel laureates F.W. de Klerk and, of course, Archbishop Tutu, looked on. Charlize Theron, the Oscar-winning South African actress, partnered with FIFA’s secretary general Jérôme Valcke to announce the 32 teams who would take part in the 2010 finals. It was the perfect showcase of football’s global star-power, six months before the World Cup kick off.
Qatar’s own World Cup hopes suffered a couple of setbacks during the festivities surrounding the draw in Cape Town. First, Reynald Temarii, the FIFA Exco member from Oceania, announced that he would be voting for the Australian 2022 bid. This was natural enough, since the country had been part of Oceania until only three years before, but coupled with Tutu’s defection days earlier and the signing of the A-list Australian actress Nicole Kidman as an ambassador, Qatar’s rival bid seemed to be gathering unwanted momentum.
Then Franz Beckenbauer made matters worse by saying publicly that Australia’s bid was ‘perfect’ and had a great chance of victory. Bin Hammam knew that Beckenbauer had to stay outwardly loyal to the bid that had hired Radmann and Abold, but such a high-profile show of support for a rival from one of the greatest footballers of all time was a blow to Qatar that he could do without. Still, he had to remain focused. His fixer Amadou Diallo was at his side throughout the draw, and the two men were already planning the next phase of their own campaign.
It was nearly time for Bin Hammam to bring his African brothers home to Doha for an all-expenses paid junket which he hoped would be a decisive moment in Qatar’s World Cup quest. Diallo had been drawing up the list of guests to target. This time it would not just be the presidents of national football associations who Bin Hammam invited to enjoy his famously lavish hospitality. The moment had come to target Africa’s voters directly.
Issa Hayatou, the president of CAF, was flown into Doha straight after the draw in Cape Town, with the Nigerian voter Amos Adamu and Jacques Anouma from the Ivory Coast following a fortnight later. Bin Hammam’s men Chirakal and Diallo worked together to arrange for the three voters and 35 African football association presidents to fly in first-class and stay at the pyramid-shaped Sheraton Hotel on the shores of the Persian Gulf at intervals throughout December.
It was a busy time for the official Qatar 2022 team as they prepared to submit their signed bidding agreement on 11 December. But Ali Al-Thawadi presided anxiously over the arrangements for the junket – repeatedly asking Chirakal to send him the latest list of delegates who were expected, wanting to know the details of the programme Bin Hammam had arranged for them and instructing him to forward the invoices for all the flights and hotel rooms to the bid for payment. ‘Please forward me the final list of CAF delegation arrival and departure. The full cost of their flight expenses and accommodation. The full program that has been arranged for them in their visit in Qatar,’ he wrote in one email on 16 December. He wrote again at the end of the month: ‘Please provide us with the invoices regarding the African FA’s visit last week from the accommodation and the travelling expenses in order to not delay those payments.’
The junket was a turning point, because Bin Hammam was going to lay his cards on the table and ask the officials outright to pledge their support to his country’s bid. From the humblest football association president of the most minor African country, through the members of the powerful CAF executive committee right up to the FIFA voters themselves, he wanted to be assured that Qatar had their backing. Bin Hammam wanted to ensure that every man who visited left Doha feeling a debt of gratitude that they would remember when the World Cup vote neared in a year’s time. And he knew how to make men grateful.
Both Hayatou and Adamu already had reason to be thankful to Bin Hammam, having seen payments of $400,000 channelled to their national federations at the start of that same month from the FIFA Goal Programme football development funds which he and his committee controlled. The money was earmarked to renovate their association headquarters into spanking new offices fit for FIFA royalty. Anouma was not left out of the Goal Programme spending spree: the Ivory Coast federation had already received $400,000 that summer, and was granted another $400,000 the following year.7
Founding the Goal Programme had been a stroke of genius by Blatter a year after Bin Hammam had helped him get elected in 1998. It was both a laudable use of FIFA’s cash and a sure-fire way of shoring up support among the world football electorate. As a reward for his loyalty, the president had given his Qatari friend the job of chairing the Goal Bureau which controlled its coffers. In the years that followed, the scheme had dished out major grants to fund more than 500 football development projects from artificial pitches to technical centres in 193 of FIFA’s member associations. Bin Hammam had pulled the purse strings for Blatter for more than a decade, and now he had an agenda of his own. If the Qatari intended to curry favour with the three African voters for his country’s World Cup bid by dishing out football development cash to their federations, no one was going to stop him. Those sorts of conflicts of interest were allowed to flourish unchecked inside FIFA.
Anouma was delighted with his visit to Doha, and enjoyed a generous welcome from Qatar’s Emir as well as from his host and fellow Exco member. Days after he returned from Doha, the secretary general of his FA wrote to say Bin Hammam’s ‘very good friend’ Anouma had asked him to prepare a proposal to ‘push very hard the bid of Qatar’.
Anouma followed up with his own email: ‘After my recent stay in Doha at your invitation, I would like to express all my thanks and gratitude for the fraternal welcome you reserved for my wife and I and members of our federation. I want to tell you how much I appreciate your availability and your attention vis-a-vis African federations hereof. It is no doubt that the Doha meeting will contribute to tighten the bonds of friendship and brotherhood between, first, the African federations and your confederation, and secondly, between yourself and leaders of African football.’ He went on: ‘I would like to assure you of my desire to ensure that the discussions we had together during this stay translate into concrete action. I would ask you to convey to His Highness the Emir of Qatar, my sincere thanks and expression of my deep respect.’ Quite what Anouma had to be grateful for was not made explicit, but it was clear that the Emir’s kindness had made quite an impression.
> Bin Hammam had used the Doha junket that December to hold a series of private meetings with the delegates at which he lobbied them to throw their support behind Qatar’s bid. At the same time, some of the guests had been offered handsome payments from the Kemco slush funds.8 David Fani, the president of the Botswana FA, emailed Bin Hammam afterwards to say how impressed he had been by Qatar’s preparations for the 2022 bid. ‘I have no doubt that your country will be ready for the 2022 FIFA World Cup and, even without a vote, I pledge my support to you in this respect. If there is anything that I can do, no matter how small, to assist your course, I would be happy to oblige,’ he wrote. ‘I will write to you in the New Year concerning assistance to Botswana Football Association as per our discussion of 21st December 2009.’
John Muinjo, president of the Namibian FA, also emailed Bin Hammam to express his enthusiasm for the Qatar bid – at a price. ‘Kindly take note that Namibia Football Association will always be behind you in its unequivocal support at all times,’ he wrote. ‘Dear President, allow me to sign off by humbly requesting you for the 2022 Bid Committee to consider as we discussed the legacy of putting up an artificial turf in the densely populated area of the North of Namibia which will positively score you points in the final analysis as you embark upon the mammoth task of securing the bid for vibrant Qatar in 2022 . . . We would want to be assisted with a once off financial assistance to the tune of U$50-000 for the 2010 season to run our second division leagues that went crippled by the prevailing global economic melt down.’ Bin Hammam responded personally: ‘I really appreciate your kind support to Qatar Bid for 2022 World Cup . . . As far as the request made by Namibia Football Association, I will see that it will be delivered as soon as possible.’9
