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

by Heidi Blake

  There was more video from the same hotel in Cairo that evening and that name Diallo kept coming up again and again. Zen-Ruffinen was having a drink in the garden with the man from Guinea, but he was reluctant to meet the lobbyists. So Zen-Ruffinen suggested that they take a stroll and ‘accidentally’ bump into him in order that he could briefly introduce them. This was the chance for Eaton to see the face of the mysterious fixer on his computer screen. Diallo shunned the limelight and there were no photographs of him on the internet. Very little was known about him publicly, except that he had worked for Bin Hammam on FIFA’s Goal Bureau. Eaton followed the camera as it made its way through the Marriott Hotel’s ornate Islamic arches into the dimly lamp-lit garden. It continued past the giant cylindrical topiary bushes to a small outside bar area, then stopped. Zen-Ruffinen’s voice was loud and clear. ‘Hello, how are you? This is Diallo,’ he said. For a split second Diallo’s face appeared in the corner of the screen. But it was too quick and the film was too grainy in the evening gloom. No matter how many times Eaton rewound it, it was impossible to get a proper view.

  Later, Zen-Ruffinen reported back that Diallo had agreed to help the Americans. ‘He said that once he has the reactions, and provided they are all, let’s say, in principle ready to accept something, then we would have to define how to proceed,’ he told them. He claimed there were many people working behind the scenes in the same way as the lobbyists: ‘The key is that everybody knows how it works but nobody should have the proof that this has been worked like that.’ A series of telephone calls followed about Diallo’s progress. The negotiations went slowly because Diallo had become suspicious after learning that the lobbyists were speaking to the voters themselves. In one of his last recorded conversations, Zen-Ruffinen was heard to say that an unnamed figure from Qatar was claiming to have secured several votes. ‘If he says “secured”, it means that half of them have been bought,’ he said.

  It had become a drama of many parts. The sub-plot in the Cairo garden on the banks of the Nile had brought together Bin Hammam’s elusive fixer, the reporters pretending to be lobbyists and FIFA’s ‘Mr Clean’, who had once again allowed himself to be mired in his former employers’ compost heap. So where was Bin Hammam as these events unfolded? He had been there too, but one step ahead of everyone else, as usual – leaving no trace of his visit for Eaton to find. On 15 September, the day before the lobbyists taped Hayatou at CAF’s headquarters, Bin Hammam and Meshadi were in the very same office. Fresh from sealing the collusion deal with Spain, the Qataris had brought their new ally, Ángel María Villar Llona, to meet the chief of African football. But there were no tape recorders running in this secret meeting, so FIFA’s investigator remained blissfully unaware that it had taken place.

  Of course, Diallo’s flirtation with the Americans had not been what it seemed. He only ever had one master, Bin Hammam, who had been in the background pulling the strings in Cairo on the night that the Guinean fixer was first approached by Zen-Ruffinen. If the Americans wished to give away their strategy and leave all the approaches to the African voters to Diallo, more fool them. It worked perfectly for the greater purpose: a Qatar World Cup. Diallo would dutifully report back any intelligence to the boss. However, there was one bloated fly in the ointment in the hotel garden that very same evening: the clumsy and avaricious Amos Adamu.

  The week of the Nigerian voter’s spectacular downfall in October, Bin Hammam had been away in China on AFC business. It caught him by surprise. Everything had been going so perfectly until The Sunday Times sent the letter to FIFA setting out the explosive collusion allegations and giving details of their encounter with Adamu.

  As was his lofty habit, the man with the pink Park View mansion had been late for his appointment with lobbyists in the same Cairo hotel on the evening of 15 September. When he arrived, he took them out into the garden and found a quiet place behind the topiary. It was a swift exchange as the basic terms of the deal had already been discussed at an earlier meeting in London the previous month.

  At the time, the USA was bidding for both the 2018 and 2022 tournaments. Adamu agreed to give his 2018 vote to the Americans and in return he would accept a payment of $400,000 before the ballot and $400,000 afterwards. The money was ostensibly to pay for artificial football pitches in Nigeria, but Adamu wanted it paid into his personal bank account rather than to his football federation. He believed he had been careful as he talked through the illicit deal. To give the transaction the cloak of respectability, he made it clear that money should not be seen ‘as a precondition for voting’. However, this was exactly what the deal was. Adamu was also happy to pledge that he would give his second-round vote to the USA for 2022, but he could not give his first. ‘I’ve already given my word to some other bid,’ he said. He later admitted that the ‘other bid’ was Qatar.

  When the recording of the encounter arrived at FIFA headquarters on 19 October, Adamu was suspended immediately. He wrote to FIFA protesting his innocence, forwarding the letter to Bin Hammam, but the Qatari knew Adamu was finished, and that meant he was one vote down. It was a real blow to the solid core of support he had built so carefully in Africa. Everything had been going so beautifully, but now it seemed all his hopes were in jeopardy.

  Bin Hammam was entering the eye of the storm when he travelled to Zurich for the biannual summit of the executive committee on Friday 29 October. The meeting of FIFA’s rulers was sure to be a volatile affair. The old guard, led by Grondona, were spitting mad that the Exco’s honour had been so impugned and questioned why Blatter had not adopted the usual strategy of retreating to the ramparts and refusing to entertain these outrageous allegations. Bin Hammam would join in the condemnation, because he needed his colleagues’ support for a more important matter. Eaton’s investigation into collusion was still ongoing and it was scheduled to be discussed during the executive committee meeting. That would mean Bin Hammam and his new ally Villar Llona would be put on the spot. They would have to deny categorically that any deal had taken place.

  Ahead of the meeting, Chirakal emailed FIFA’s finance office to say that Bin Hammam’s chauffeur would be dropping by as usual to pick up $20,000 in cash. When the committee met in its Dr Strangelove-style underground bunker, the two empty seats of Adamu and Temarii further inflamed tempers. Bin Hammam sat apart from Villar Llona to avoid the appearance of being too close in this of all meetings. Several of their colleagues were between them, including the bulky figure of Chuck Blazer. The members had a brief discussion about the collusion allegations but this was swiftly passed over. The Exco was more angry about the messenger than the message. Valcke pacified the men, assuring them that there was no concrete evidence of collusion, even though Eaton had only been on the case for ten days and had not even spoken to the Qatar bid.

  Villar Llona could not contain his delight that the secretary general was so dismissive of the allegations. When the discussion moved on to another topic, the triumphant Spaniard scribbled a note which read ‘Congratulations, vamos a ganar’. He folded up the scrap of paper and handed it to his nearest colleague, requesting that he pass it down the line to Bin Hammam. Maybe Villar Llona had forgotten that the man bulging out of the chair next to his Qatari ally, Blazer, spoke fluent Spanish. Bin Hammam was bemused by the note when it reached him, and leant across to Blazer to ask him to translate. The American reached for his reading glasses, and scanned the scrap of paper. Then he looked up with a raised eyebrow. ‘It says “Congratulations, we are going to win,”’ he drawled. Bin Hammam winced. His neighbour, after all, was supporting the rival United States 2022 bid. As soon as the meeting wound up, Blazer ambled up to a friendly reporter at the Associated Press and blabbed about what he had read. ‘I don’t think it was the time or place. I think Mohamed was slightly embarrassed,’ he whispered. ‘It’s the type of thing that shouldn’t have happened but nothing more than that.’

  When the story broke, the world read it as confirmation that the deal between Qatar and Spain was back on, i
f there had ever been any doubt. It was yet another cock-up, but Bin Hammam had no time to stop and reflect on the damage. Straight after the meeting, he and Hany Abo Rida boarded the private jet that would carry them to Moscow for their meeting at the Kremlin.

  Eaton was carrying on regardless. Even as the executive committee was discussing the collusion deal, he was in his office on the floor above emailing Ali Al-Thawadi, who had not responded to any correspondence since his investigation had started. He was bristling with frustration as he typed. ‘I do not seem to have a response from you or your Committee to my emails (copied below),’ he wrote. ‘As I am sure you are aware, the Ethics Committee enquiry is ongoing. While for the present there is no need for me to speak directly with you or your representatives, my independent investigation is also ongoing.’

  Eaton added that he would be in Doha from the following Monday for a few days as a delegate at the Interpol general assembly, which was being held in the city. It was the perfect opportunity for the Qataris to meet him and answer the collusion allegations. But there were other things in store for FIFA’s investigator when he got to Doha: the trip was to be the beginning of a glittering new opportunity. While attending the general assembly, Eaton was invited to meet Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser Bin Khalifa Al Thani, a member of the ruling family and Qatar’s interior minister, who was destined to become the prime minister.

  Sheikh Abdullah was keen to discuss his idea of setting up an international centre for sports security in Doha to investigate serious integrity issues – such as corruption in the bidding process for the hosting of sporting tournaments. ‘At the meeting Sheikh Abdullah raised the possibility of Qatar developing an International Centre for Sports Security,’ Eaton recalled later in an email to a friend. He was receptive to the idea. ‘I said to him at the time that not only was this an interesting proposal generally, but that should Qatar win the bid for 2022, that on behalf of FIFA I would do my best to promote the concept widely. A specific Academy dedicated to Sports Security professionals is crucial at this time in my opinion.’

  Such a centre would surely require a top-notch sports investigator who, since it was Qatar, would have a multi-million-pound budget at their disposal. When the plan got up and running, that was where Eaton would come in. It was a curious coincidence that Sheikh Abdullah had sought to sound out FIFA’s investigator about the venture at the very time he was investigating the Qatar bid. Furthermore, Eaton also had a friendly tête-à-tête with Hassan Al-Thawadi at the Four Seasons Hotel while he was in Doha. It was good to have cordial relations with the men from the Gulf state, even if they were refusing to cooperate with his inquiry, and it was to pay off handsomely a year later when Eaton would land a big new job in Doha.30

  Days after returning from Qatar, his investigation into Bin Hammam’s deal with Villar Llona was quietly shelved. The Qatar bid committee did eventually respond to FIFA about the collusion allegation. It wrote to complain that FIFA had overstepped its own rules by bringing in Eaton when the matter should have been dealt with by its ethics committee alone. Claudio Sulser, the ethics committee chairman, announced a week later that FIFA was closing its file on collusion. ‘We didn’t find sufficient grounds to reach the conclusion there was any collusion, therefore we didn’t move forward on that case,’ said Sulser. ‘Obviously, it’s harder to prove collusion even though doubts may always arise.’ FIFA had reverted to type. It scapegoated a few individuals, and then shut the door on any further investigation into the wider allegations from the video. The consultants who had been caught being so indiscreet on camera were given suspensions, mostly for breaking the rules by talking out of turn about things they had no business discussing with strangers. The World Cup ballot would have to go ahead with only 22 voters, because Adamu and Temarii were banned from football after being caught discussing the sale of their votes. The goalposts had been shifted and Bin Hammam would have to adapt.

  Thirteen

  Only God Knows What You Do for the Brothers

  The World Cup ballot was now just two weeks away, and it was time for one last jamboree before the fate of Qatar’s 2022 bid was sealed. The more modern members of Doha’s high society had donned their finest designer outfits, the traditionalists were in their richest robes, and all were heading to the Al-Khalifa Stadium in their Porsches and Baby Bentleys for a thriller. Qatar was hosting a football match between two great teams: Brazil and Argentina. It was a contest that would have graced any final of the World Cup and that was the whole point.

  The friendly match was the glittering centrepiece of a week-long sports conference to extol the virtues of bringing the globe’s most prestigious tournament to the Gulf state in 12 years’ time. Journalists from all round the world had been invited to view the spectacle on the temperate winter evening of 17 November. Mohamed bin Hammam captured the mood of cheerful optimism as he penned an open letter to the official figureheads of his country’s World Cup campaign ahead of the event, even slipping in a reference to the king of pop. ‘You are a phenomenon deserving to be respected and supported. You are about to write history,’ he raved. ‘You are, as Michael Jackson sang, the WORLD. You are so close. You can do it!’

  Bin Hammam was eagerly awaiting the chance to see such gods of the game performing on his home soil. But the events on the field were of secondary importance. The match was an opportunity to offer his supporters one last big junket before the ballot. Amadou Diallo had been given the role as ‘coordinator’ of the guest list, which, of course, meant it was well attended.

  More than 20 presidents of African football federations were flown in to Doha at Bin Hammam’s expense and put up in the Ritz Carlton alongside a similar number of Asian federation heads. Among them was Colonel Djibrilla Hima Hamidou, president of the Niger FA, who had enjoyed Bin Hammam’s hospitality at the South African World Cup and afterwards had been very thankful to Diallo for arranging $50,000 to be paid to his federation from the billionaire’s slush fund account at Kemco. He checked in at the Ritz alongside Ganesh Thapa, president of the Nepal FA, who had received £100,000 for ‘business promotion’ from the same slush fund a couple of months earlier.

  As ever, with such a large group of people there were logistical problems which, inevitably, fell on the ever-patient Najeeb Chirakal to sort out. Hassan Bility, the Liberian president, was affronted when his wife was asked to hand over her credit card on check-in at the Ritz. ‘Please note that my wife [was] requested to make payment for the Hotel Today before being allowed to enter the hotel. Pls follow it up and handle them for me,’ he ordered Chirakal.

  Most of the guests were as thankful as ever for their Qatari friend’s generosity. None could have been more delighted than Fadoul Houssein, the president of the Djibouti football association who had previously solicited $30,000 for the medical treatment of his general secretary. He was so moved he felt only full capitals could express the depth of his gratitude. ‘DEAR BROTHER ONLY PRESIDENT GOD KNOWS WHAT YOU DO FOR BROTHERS . . . STILL CONTINUE TO PRAY TO WIN THE ORGANIZATION OF OUR WORLD CUP 2022 WORLD . . . WE ARE ALWAYS BESIDE YOU AND PERSONALLY I AM RECOGNIZING OUR FRATERNITY AND I ALREADY SEE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD CUP ON THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF THE WORLD DOHA.’

  Ganbold Buyannemekh, president of the Mongolia football federation whose daughter’s university education was being bankrolled by Bin Hammam, was just as supportive, telling his friend he was ‘confident Qatar deserves to be a winner in the coming bid for FIFA World Cup 2022’.

  While the junket was a great way to reward Bin Hammam’s ‘brothers in football’, the event also had the even greater virtue of cementing Qatar’s relationships with the two voters from Brazil and Argentina. The match had been arranged three months earlier in late August, when Bin Hammam had been stitching up the collusion deal with Spain that had since caused such jitters in the bidding race. Despite all the turbulence of the last month, he had survived unscathed with the three Latin voters in the bag – among them Brazil’s Ricardo Teixeira and Argentina’s Julio Grondo
na. He had extended an invitation to the two men to be his guests in Doha for the fixture and also invited the third member of the voting bloc, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay.

  ‘Dear friend,’ he wrote to Leoz on 4 November. ‘On 17th November Qatar will be hosting a Friendly Match between two giant teams of your continent Brazil vs Argentina. It is my personal desire to invite you to witness this match in my home town. I hope that you will be able to spare some time to visit my country for that purpose. I would like to extend my cordial invitation also to your lovely wife. Our friend Mr Ricardo Teixeira will be arriving on 14th November via Paris and I waiting confirmation from our friend Mr Grondona. Please honour my invitation to visit my country.’

  There would be a big pay-day for the Brazilian and Argentinian federations for their role in the match, which was organised by the Qatar FA in conjunction with the country’s official 2022 bid committee. Exactly how much the two federations were paid, and by whom, was kept carefully under wraps. The Qatar Football Association submitted accounts to the AFC stating that it had taken $534,000 in gate receipts from the game, and that there were no other revenues. But the match was being privately sponsored by a conglomerate owned by a super-rich Qatari that channelled payments to Grondona and Teixeira’s associations for fielding their national teams. The name Al Saad & Sons Group was emblazoned on all the official boards inside the stadium. This Qatari construction and engineering company was poised to swoop on the multi-billion-dollar infrastructure contracts if the country’s bid was successful.