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

by Heidi Blake

  The junket had been a runaway success. Just as Bin Hammam had hoped, it marked a turning point. Days after the last of the delegates returned from Doha on 7 January 2010, CAF announced that it had struck a deal worth $1.8 million for the official Qatar 2022 bid to sponsor its congress in Angola at the end of the month. The money would be paid into the confederation’s bank accounts, which were ultimately controlled by its president, Hayatou.

  His secretary general Mustapha Fahmy emailed all the other bids after the deal was done to tell them that they had been effectively gagged by Qatar. ‘Kindly note that CAF has signed an exclusive sponsorship agreement with Qatar 2022 for the CAF Congress 2010, which as a consequence means that no other bidding nations for the FIFA World Cup will be allowed to make any presentations at the Congress . . . However, your delegation and representatives will be allowed to attend as “observers”, but without the possibility to organise press conferences, distribute any promotional material or erect stands to that effect within the venue and its vicinity on that day.’ Bin Hammam’s African campaign had come to fruition. CAF belonged to Qatar.

  Six

  Cocktails, Conspiracy and a Million-dollar Dinner

  The djembe were drumming and the atmosphere was fraught. It was January 2010 and a big year for African football with the continent’s first World Cup just months away. But as the continent’s best national teams descended on Angola for the Africa Cup of Nations, the celebratory mood was cut down by a crackle of machine-gun fire. A bus carrying the Togolese team had been peppered with bullets by terrorists as it crossed the border into the Angolan province of Cabinda ahead of the first game. The driver and an assistant coach died instantly and members of the team were rushed to hospital suffering from life-threatening gunshot wounds.

  Togo called on the leaders of the Confederation of African Football to cancel the tournament, but it went ahead without them, nonetheless, as did the grubby deals of football politics. The final weekend of the Cup of Nations was when the CAF congress of 53 federations met to hammer out their business. Many of Mohamed bin Hammam’s well-paid African friends were flying into Luanda, the coastal capital of Angola, with its palm-fringed beaches buffeted by Atlantic waves. The city, like Doha, had thrust up quickly following an oil boom in the years after the country’s bloody civil war, but it remained a grim place for millions of its inhabitants. The Luandan slums stank of bad drains and exhaust fumes from the city’s gridlocked streets. The poor lived cheek by jowl in the cramped bairros with no running water or electricity, scavenging for scraps from the privileged few who hoarded the riches of the country’s black gold rush.

  These were not matters that needed to concern the CAF delegates. Their congress was being held in the spacious Talatona Convention Hotel on the city’s southern fringe. The rainbow-coloured structure was the only five-star hotel in Luanda and was surrounded by open space, a stark contrast to the foetid over-crowding of the city outside its garden borders. Inside this haven of crisp linen and tall marble corridors were four FIFA Exco members – Issa Hayatou, Amos Adamu, Jacques Anouma and the new boy on the block, Egypt’s Hany Abo Rida, who had been elected the previous year. Around them were scores of African football officials who might influence their votes in the ballot later that year to decide the host of the World Cup. Many were staying in the hotel’s luxurious villas, a short walk through the abundant gardens for a morning dip in the pool. Over breakfasts of fruit and creamy cassava porridge, the delegates could see huddles of men in white dishdashas. Everyone knew why they were there. Those men from the Middle East were paying for the whole jamboree. It was nice to have such good friends.

  News of the Qatar 2022 team’s involvement in the CAF congress had shattered the respectful peace that had so far existed between the rival bidders. The bombshell was dropped by CAF’s secretary general Mustapha Fahmy two days before the bullets had ripped through the Togolese coach. Qatar had quietly paid $1.8 million to sponsor the CAF congress and they wanted their money’s worth. The other bid teams were livid when Fahmy informed them that they would be banned from promoting their World Cup campaigns. CAF had nailed its colours to the mast: the Qatar 2022 bid’s advertising was plastered across the hotel and its logo was on almost every scrap of paper including the menus and invitations to Saturday evening’s gala dinner – itself paid for by the men from the Gulf, naturally.

  Qatar was the only bid allowed to take up the time of the African federation delegates with a slideshow presentation extolling the virtues of a Doha World Cup. As for the other bids, they had to sit on their hands as mere ‘observers’. They were furious. The Swiss-Hungarian lobbyist Peter Hargitay was especially piqued after learning that the Australian bid he was working for had been excluded. He rang around the other countries to try to coordinate a complaint to FIFA, but it was to no avail. The bidding rules were not robust enough to prevent Qatar buying up the delegates’ undivided attention in this way – as long as no CAF officials got a personal cut of the cash.

  At the podium in the hotel’s conference room, the Qatar bid’s chief executive Hassan Al-Thawadi was in confident mood, displaying none of the doubts about his country’s chances that had privately troubled Bin Hammam since the beginning. The script for his presentation had been written down for him and he had rehearsed carefully; by now he had the patter off by heart. The pitch went as follows: Qatar would present a ‘very, very strong bid’ which would be its gift to the entire region. People from Egypt, the Emirates or Kuwait had previously been unable to attend a World Cup. This would be their chance. Those from outside the Middle East would have an opportunity to see and experience a different culture when they visited Qatar. FIFA was a wonderful organisation that could bring the world together. Qatar had already hosted the Asian Games in 2006, and the 2022 World Cup would be a further catalyst for the development of football in the region. Al-Thawadi called on FIFA to repeat its historic decision in awarding Africa its first World Cup and hand the 2022 finals to the Middle East. He said Qatar shared Africa’s ambition to harness ‘the power of football as a vehicle for hope and understanding’.

  Perhaps some of the delegates were listening and perhaps they weren’t. Some looked anxiously at their watches wondering whether there would be time for a quick cocktail on a poolside sun lounger before daylight turned to dusk. And more importantly, where was their friend Amadou Diallo? Their fellow African bonhomme who paid for all the drinks was not in sight that day. He was fixing the side meetings in the enviable suite of the man who mattered most to the Africans: Bin Hammam. The rumours had been spreading. He was offering more cash to his friends in Africa and there were no strings attached. It was safest to pay the money into your personal bank account – that way it was in the right hands.

  Al-Thawadi soldiered on through his carefully thought-out catchwords, which were illustrated with Powerpoint slide projections showing artists’ depictions of the world-class facilities Qatar promised to build. The Gulf state was developing unique ‘environmentally friendly’ futuristic cooling technologies that would make the game playable in even the hottest weather. Air cooling systems had already been installed at the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, and the bid was looking at ways to introduce those innovations to training grounds and fan zones too. He showed two video presentations, one of which showcased England’s friendly match with Brazil at the stadium the previous November. It was possible to host major international games in Qatar – albeit in late autumn.

  Yes, Qatar was a small country, but a geographically compact bid was a virtue, Al-Thawadi confidently stated. Small was good. Why? Because it meant that teams and fans would not have to worry about travelling or making hotel reservations in different cities hundreds of miles apart as they would in Australia or the US. Qatar had enough space for everybody out in the desert; enough to build a whole new city to accommodate the World Cup. The new metropolis of Lusail would be located 23km outside Doha, beyond the West Bay lagoon, and it would be a pleasureland of marinas, island re
sorts, an entertainment district, luxury shopping and leisure facilities (including two golf courses). There would even be an all-giraffe zoo. Why not? But the jewel in the city’s crown would be the new Lusail Iconic Stadium, with a capacity of 90,000, which would host the opening and final matches of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. This sort of no-holds-barred innovation was what made Qatar special. The country was ‘the epitome of a global village’, Al-Thawadi said.

  The Qatar bid had recently commissioned a socio-economic impact study by the UK chartered accountants firm Grant Thornton, which calculated that $11.6 billion would be injected into the nation’s economy if the country were named the host of the 2022 World Cup: $6.7 billion from construction work; $2.1 billion from the tournament itself; and $2.7 billion from tourism. That was the true value of the prized tournament. Al-Thawadi acknowledged that Qatar was in a good financial position to provide a well-funded World Cup, insisting that the bid’s real purpose was to further the development of his country and region. ‘Qatar is a small nation with a big heart and huge ambition and it carries the hopes and dreams of millions of people across the Middle East,’ he said. Then, to round off his presentation, he unveiled the Cameroonian football legend Roger Milla as the latest handsomely paid ambassador for the Qatar bid team, joining other heroes such as Gabriel Batistuta and Ronald de Boer on its star-studded roster.

  The delegates applauded. It was time to get back to their friends and family by the pool. As Al-Thawadi stepped down from the podium, he was ushered away by a woman in a smart dark-blue shirt suit and long raven hair. Phaedra Al-Majid was the bid’s international media officer; she had prepared answers in advance to possible questions from journalists which might be posed to her chief executive after his congress speech. If asked about the sensitive matter of Bin Hammam’s role in the World Cup campaign, Al-Thawadi was instructed to say no more than: ‘Mohamed bin Hammam is a supporter of the bid in his role as a Qatari citizen, there is no doubt about that.’ That was an understatement, and Al-Thawadi knew it. However, Al-Majid’s role in the Luanda conference was to acquire far more significance than her work as a press officer. She would end up making headlines around the world herself.

  Al-Majid had joined the Qatar 2022 bid team in May 2009 as a specialist in communications work. She was a single parent of joint Jordanian and American nationality who had recently split up with her Qatari husband and was looking after her two sons, one of whom was severely autistic, on her own in an apartment in Doha. Quick-talking and combative, she often found herself in conflict with her Qatari male bid team colleagues in a culture where women were expected to take a subordinate role. She was, however, very useful to the bid. She had been heavily involved in organising the trip to Luanda, and had helped write Al-Thawadi’s presentation. She was also fluent in French and was therefore called upon to translate when the bid met African members of the executive committee who did not speak English or Arabic as their first language.

  Al-Majid attended a series of such meetings at the Talatona Hotel suites during the CAF congress in Luanda, and she would one day claim to have been shocked by what occurred at the congress. Two years later, Al-Majid was to become the first whistleblower to come forward and raise concerns about corruption in Qatar’s World Cup bid. She would say that, at meetings in the hotel with the CAF president, Issa Hayatou, the Nigerian Amos Adamu and the Ivory Coast voter Jacques Anouma, Qatar had offered the eye-watering sums of $1.5 million each in exchange for their votes. The money would go to their football associations, she said, but there would be no questions asked about how it was used. ‘It was said in such a way that “we are giving it to you”,’ she recalled. ‘It was going to their Federation, basically if they took it into their pocket, then we don’t give a jack.’

  Al-Majid would eventually make her allegations in an interview with The Sunday Times, and her claims were published in a submission of evidence sent to a committee of MPs in the House of Commons. They caused a storm of controversy which momentarily threatened to engulf the 2022 bid. Its leaders denied her claims absolutely, as did Hayatou, Adamu and Anouma, but Al-Majid’s testimony would leave a lingering stain on Qatar’s World Cup dream.10 However, the storm was a long time coming. For now, all was peaceful in Luanda where the CAF delegates were lapping up the hospitality of their friends from the Middle East.

  The family of Amos Adamu were particularly enjoying the congress and the riveting football at the Africa Cup of Nations. They had cheered in the stands as their Nigerian team had battled through to the semi-finals and ended up in third place with a 1-0 win over Algeria. The small, stocky figure of Adamu was accompanied throughout the congress by his favourite son, the 26-year-old playboy Samson. While Adamu senior was taciturn to the point of being monosyllabic, his son was a gregarious communicator with all the sheen of the best private education that his father’s expanding fortune could buy.

  Adamu had three sons who participated in the family’s businesses. Phillips, his eldest from his first marriage, was a dry cleaner who also dabbled in sport; his second son, Ezekiel, was the manager of his father’s thousand-seat events centre, one of Lagos’s most profitable venues with the unlikely title Balmoral Hall. The tall, good-looking Samson was trying to get his foot in the door of the football business and was casting around for new money-making opportunities. He had been privately educated in Lagos and then sent away to study at the American University in Paris after a brief and unsuccessful stint in the Nigerian army.

  A few months before the congress, Samson had graduated from the Université de Neuchâtel in Switzerland with a FIFA masters degree in sports administration. The bill for his degree had been taken care of by FIFA, who gave scholarships to five African students each year as a way of encouraging the sport’s growth in the developing world. Along with his dry-cleaner brother Phillips, he had set up a company called Kinetic Sport Management with a share capital of £4,000 just three months before the Luanda trip. The company was registered at his father’s high-walled villa in a wealthy suburb of Abuja, the Nigerian capital.

  His company was largely dormant, but in the foyer at the Talatona Hotel he had met a very nice man in a flowing white robe who seemed keen to help get his business off the ground. It was none other than Ali Al-Thawadi, the deputy chief executive of the Qatar bid committee. The two men hit it off over strong black coffee, and hammered out a plan. Qatar 2022 wanted to sponsor a gala dinner to celebrate famous former African football players on the eve of the World Cup in South Africa that June. It would be called the Legends’ Dinner and it was their way of demonstrating Qatar’s continuing support for African football in the wake of the Luanda congress.

  Ali seemed like a very kind man and a pleasure to do business with. He wanted Samson to be the organiser of the dinner, and he didn’t ask any awkward questions about his inexperience in the world of commerce or the fact that Samson had never managed such an event before. After all, his FIFA Exco father knew how to throw dinners for hundreds of people – Adamu had been doing it for years in the family’s Balmoral Hall events centre. Ali was surprisingly matter-of-fact about the details. He didn’t need to see complicated costings for the event, there was going to be plenty of room in the budget. Qatar 2022 proposed to pay Samson the round sum of $1 million to put on the dinner. It was a very generous business proposal to the son of one of the Exco voters the bid needed to woo.

  Standing majestically in the West Bay marina area of Doha is a glinting cigarette lighter of a building, 30 storeys and 125 metres high. The curved mirrored surface of the Qatar Olympic Tower concealed a hive of activity within. The 2022 bid team had their offices there, as did Mohamed bin Hammam. It was where the billionaire’s life was organised by Najeeb Chirakal, his loyal and ever-affable personal assistant. If one of his master’s entourage wanted a flight booked, they went to Najeeb. When somebody was paid off by Bin Hammam’s slush fund, the payment slips would go to Najeeb. When the Qatar bid needed personal details of the FIFA Exco members or their wives, Najeeb would
be their man. Indeed, Chirakal was so close to the Qatar 2022 bid committee that in January 2010, shortly before the Luanda congress, they had given him an employment contract to work for them part-time. He was to continue to run Bin Hammam’s private office and at the same time provide ‘international relations’ services to the bid committee. The arrangement was kept under wraps. There was to be no public link between Bin Hammam and the team officially leading Qatar’s World Cup campaign.

  Chirakal was also Amadou Diallo’s main point of contact for Bin Hammam. The Guinean was now working full-time for his Qatari boss to muster support for the World Cup bid. He would bellow the greeting ‘Barakallah Feek!’ – ‘May the blessings of Allah be upon you!’ – to his Indian friend when he phoned the Olympic Tower to arrange logistics for his various trips. Immediately before heading off to Luanda for the African congress, Diallo had been dispatched on another mission for the boss. As a fluent French speaker he was the ideal man to make overtures to the Netherlands–Belgium campaign for the 2018 World Cup and gather intelligence.

  He took the train from his Paris home to meet the dreadlocked former French football player Christian Karembeu, who was employed as a special advisor to the Low Countries bid. On the way back, he dashed off a report for Chirakal to pass on to Bin Hammam. He said that the Dutch and Belgians had discussed deals with two of executive committee voters: Jacques Anouma and Reynald Temarii. Anouma was no surprise to Diallo. He wrote: ‘The Belgians have confirmed that which I knew already: The Belgians have offered Jacques Anouma a collaboration within the scope of security and training. For example it is expected that the first module of training for the referees and coaches will be from the 31-01 to 5-02 [31 January to 5 February 2010] in Abidjan . . . Oceania: The Belgians have proposed to Temarii through Louis Michel, former commissioner for Development at the European Union, a collaboration in the development, as Temarii has high political ambitions.’