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

by Heidi Blake

  The subject of the call to Bin Hammam was a $1.2 million payment to Warner from the Kemco slush fund. Within a couple of hours, Mora sent Chirakal the first of several emails that day which were to give details of how the cash should be paid. In order to disguise the payment, Mora asked for $412,000 to be paid into her own account, $432,000 into an account controlled by Warner’s son Daryl and a further $368,000 into a company called We Buy Houses Ltd, owned by the FIFA official. All three accounts were in the same branch of the First Citizens Bank in the northern fishing district of Tunapuna, Trinidad. Chirakal dutifully arranged for the money to be paid through Kemco in the following days.

  Now that Jack was getting paid, any fractures in the relationship with his brother in Qatar were quickly plastered over. The two men were planning to fight the ethics committee’s decision to suspend them and they set about getting their stories straight over a string of calls and emails. FIFA had announced that there would be an independent investigation by the Freeh Group, a US company owned by the former FBI director Louis Freeh, into the bribery allegations, and both Bin Hammam and Warner were outraged. They were simply not prepared to deal with these American interlopers. FIFA’s internal problems should be kept inside the FIFA family. Wasn’t that what Blatter was always saying? Both Bin Hammam and Warner resolved to refuse to speak to Freeh and his sidekick Tim Flynn.

  The contract had been a breakthrough for Freeh, who had been attempting to persuade FIFA to hire him as its ‘independent ombudsperson’ for some time. In an email back in February to Valcke and FIFA’s director of finance, Markus Kattner, he had set out his vision for the role he could play. ‘I believe that the time is ideal now for the President to announce a new, comprehensive plan to establish the strongest ethical and anti-corruption governance structure for FIFA,’ he wrote. And he, Louis, was just the man for the job. ‘One recommendation would be for him to appoint me as an independent “Ombudsperson” who would function as a public “clearing house” for corruption or ethical complaints alleged against FIFA and its associated officials. (As an option, this could also be established to be an investigative facility which would report its findings/recommendations directly to the President. However, the Ombudsperson role can be simply a “reporting channel” for the President).’

  The benefits of such a scheme would be endless. ‘The costs associated with its operation (eg, a “hot line,” minimal staffing, administrative, etc.) are very minimal and, conversely, the “reputational” and PR benefits are very immense if rolled-out properly and personally endorsed by the senior leadership. We realise how busy you are but I am convinced that such an action, taken now (when the public media has quieted a bit), would be a “win-win” for the President and FIFA.’

  Blatter had decided that the time had come to claim that ‘win-win’, now he wanted Bin Hammam and Warner buried, and so his officials had picked up the phone to Freeh and asked him to come and sort out the former presidential challenger and his friend in the Caribbean. Flynn was now tearing around the world on a bottomless expense account, visiting officials in the Bahamas, Zurich and New York, piecing together their accounts of what had happened in Port of Spain.

  Dozens of football officials were prepared to speak to them and they collected a whole raft of new affidavits corroborating the original accounts by Fred Lunn, Sonia Bien-Aime and David Sabir about what had occurred in Trinidad. Some of the officials had handed over records showing they had deposited their $40,000 gift in bank accounts straight after the congress. Others had been given letters by the CFU confirming that they had been given the cash for football development to enable them to carry it through customs. One had kept the original brown envelope, matching the one in Lunn’s photograph, which he handed over. The investigators had even managed to recoup about $80,000 of the cash that had been disbursed. But for all this industry, every effort they made to speak to either of the accused men themselves was frustrated.

  While Bin Hammam refused to co-operate, the companions who had been with him on the Port of Spain trip were happy to leap to his defence when they had their collars felt by Flynn. Manilal Fernando remained a loyal champion of Bin Hammam throughout his suspension. On 16 July, he emailed his friend to say he had been contacted by the investigators. ‘I would be happy to have a copy of your Statement for my personal guidance,’ he said. Later, he sent Bin Hammam the statement prepared by Worawi Makudi, who had also been on the trip. Among his many talents, Fernando was the proud owner of a law degree, and he offered his friend in Qatar unlimited free legal advice. At the end of June, he asked Bin Hammam to send over his entire file and urged him to take a strong stance because ‘the American lawyers will try to fix you.’

  Back in Port of Spain, Mora was having trouble with the bank holding the accounts into which Bin Hammam had paid the $1.2 million for Warner. On 16 June she was forced to contact Chirakal again. ‘The funds have hit the all respective accounts,’ she wrote, ‘but the banks are all asking for a letter from you stating that the funds came from you and the purpose.’ She provided Chirakal with the wording for three letters to cover each of the payments. The first said: ‘This is to advise that monies in the amount of US $412,000.00 was wire transferred to Ms Joanne Mora by Khalid Electrical and Mechanical to offset expenses associated with meetings held in Trinidad and Tobago, Zurich, Switzerland and New York, USA of delegates and officers of the Caribbean. Such costs include but are not limited to airfare, accommodation, meeting logistics, interpretation equipment and services, etc.’ The other ‘Kemco letters’, again written on Mora’s computer, were along similar lines but mentioned legal costs for an ‘on-going matter’. Kemco’s general manager sent the letters back to Mora that day.

  While Warner was waiting to collect the $1.2 million waiting in the bank, a short statement appeared on FIFA’s website on Monday 20 June which sent a shock through the global game. The president of CONCACAF had resigned all his positions in FIFA, ending his 29-year career as a football administrator. One of the game’s biggest and most controversial beasts had gone. Since Warner was no longer involved in FIFA, the investigators from the Freeh Group were deprived of any right to pry into his affairs. He would not have to answer any questions or submit his financial accounts, which would have shown his past payments from Bin Hammam.

  FIFA’s statement accompanying his resignation left the world – and its own investigators – baffled. Warner was leaving while under investigation for bribery and yet Blatter showered him with praise. ‘Mr Warner is leaving FIFA by his own volition after nearly 30 years of service, having chosen to focus on his important work on behalf of the people and government of Trinidad and Tobago as a Cabinet Minister and as the Chairman of the United National Congress, the major party in his country’s coalition government,’ the FIFA press statement said. ‘The FIFA Executive Committee, the FIFA President and the FIFA management thank Mr Warner for his services to Caribbean, CONCACAF and international football over his many years devoted to football at both regional and international level, and wish him well for the future.’ And then world football’s governing body waved the magic wand and made all charges against Warner disappear. ‘As a consequence of Mr Warner’s self-determined resignation, all Ethics Committee procedures against him have been closed and the presumption of innocence is maintained.’

  FIFA’s own in-house investigator Chris Eaton had been away from Zurich and was intrigued to learn of Warner’s resignation. He forwarded a Press Association report to his old friend Tim Flynn, who soon pinged back a reply.

  ‘That got out quickly,’ Flynn wrote. ‘It will be interesting to see what he has to say if he talks to us.’

  ‘He won’t talk to you mate – that’s why he resigned,’ Eaton scoffed. ‘He’s fighting for his life now – and I don’t care!’

  ‘I agree,’ said Flynn. ‘If he does it will all be self-serving.’

  ‘But he’s also taken out his evidence against BH [Bin Hammam] – so chances are he has had an inducement to resign,’ Eato
n came back.

  ‘I think he may come to Zurich to talk to us but it will be interesting to see what the terms were. They wont [sic] give us the agreement,’ said Flynn. Eaton had been unaware of the negotiations with Warner, but his ears pricked up at the mention of an agreement.

  ‘I’ve been out of the loop for a couple of weeks . . . so if there has been a “pre-resignation” agreement, as there should have been, then good,’ he wrote. ‘And I would hope part of the condition of FIFA saying such things as: “Mr Warner is leaving FIFA by his own volition after nearly 30 years of service,” [is] that full and frank disclosure is required, because I don’t know how you (I mean, Louie and you guys) can write up this without inculpating Warner. So much then for his (temporary) presumption.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Flynn. ‘That will be an interesting dance that will take place later this week . . . Warner is trying to save his political life but I don’t see it unless he tries to put it all on Bin Hammam. Unless of course, they take over the questioning from us. I will keep you in the loop.’

  The two men had got at least one thing right: Bin Hammam had indeed paid Warner a large inducement, but the $1.2 million was still sitting in a Trinidad bank while its officials assessed whether any money-laundering laws had been broken. They were still unhappy, despite receiving the letters Mora had requested from Kemco. She once again wrote to Chirakal: ‘Dear Najeeb, Please inform Mr bin Hammam . . . that all the funds have been or will be returned to source. No reasons were given.’ It was a problem that was to bedevil the attempted transfer of funds for a few more weeks.

  Warner had to find a new way to receive the money. He suggested an alternative route: the cash could be paid as a single sum of $1.2 million into his company J&D International, which had an account in Salt Lake City, Utah. He told Bin Hammam he was getting desperate. ‘My dear brother,’ Warner wrote in an email. ‘We have a serious problem in paying all our legal bills since the local bank did not release the transfer but instead returned it to your bank. In the circumstances, can you be kind enough to have the full sum wired to the under-mentioned account for which I do thank you kindly. Time is of the essence.’ Later the same day, he sent Bin Hammam a $20,000 bill from his lawyer, with the subject: ‘Help’. However, the Salt Lake City transfer failed too, and Warner’s staff turned to the Cayman Islands as a way to transfer the cash from Qatar. When Chirakal wrote to say he believed the money had finally been paid, Warner’s delighted response read: ‘Allah is great ! ! !’

  But the joy was misplaced: that transfer too eventually bounced back. ‘Just got a rude shock from our Bankers that your Bank has again returned the funds,’ Mohammed Farid, Kemco’s financial controller, wrote to Mora on 7 July. Mora responded: ‘We are working feverishly on our end to address this distressing situation,’ and quickly came back with a suggestion. The money should be sent ‘in parts rather than the entire amount, within at least one week of each other (500K, 212K, 500K) [or] be sent from another account, possibly one that is more directly related to football and the reason for sending same could be payment for advisory/professional services rendered.’ Three days later, Warner chimed in with an email directly to Bin Hammam. ‘I’m financially desperate re the legal bills,’ he pleaded. The following day, on 14 July, another failed attempt was made to pay the money – this time into an account held by Warner in New York.

  A false invoice for ‘professional services provided over the period 2005-2010’ was then concocted as a fig leaf for the corrupt payment, and dated 15 December 2010. This time, the attempt to pay the cash appeared to have been successful. Warner had gone for good, and his tsunami had subsided far from the Doha shore in the clear blue waters of the Caribbean Sea.

  As Jack was being taken care of, there was more good news for the Qatar bid as it sought to fight off accusations that it had bought the World Cup. It came curiously from Phaedra Al-Majid, the whistleblower who had alleged that she had witnessed the African executive committee members taking bribes from her bid team colleagues at the Luanda congress. On 1 July, she signed a witness statement completely retracting her allegations and publicly apologising to her former employees, and the three men she alleged had taken bribes: Issa Hayatou, Jacques Anouma and Amos Adamu. The barely believable U-turn by Al-Majid was a major coup for Qatar which instantly claimed she had wiped clean a major stain on its reputation. Although, as it happened, Majid’s mea culpa moment had all been orchestrated by the Qatar 2022 supreme committee.

  Blatter had already dismissed the allegations by the whistleblower on the eve of his re-election, claiming that she had not come forward with any evidence and promising that the Qatar World Cup would therefore remain untouched. In fact, Al-Majid had been negotiating with Eaton, through a London lawyer, to give her full account to FIFA under conditions that it maintained her anonymity and protected her from a legal action. Eaton had contacted The Sunday Times after Majid’s allegations had been included in the newspaper’s submission to Parliament the previous month, to see if its journalists would be willing to let him talk to the whistleblower. The newspaper sought permission from Al-Majid and provided her with a lawyer to make sure that any interview with FIFA did not expose her to any risk. She was a single mother with two children and she was anxious about being thrown to the wolves. She had every right to be nervous.

  Al-Majid’s lawyer had first contacted Eaton on 20 May and began discussing terms under which she could give evidence. Two days later a FIFA security colleague emailed Eaton confidentially about ways they might be able to discredit the whistleblower. He suggested that the investigator should: ‘Ask the Qatar contact for her name and any background,’ and ‘We should research her background too. It may be there is something in it to use.’ FIFA had proposed a meeting with Al-Majid on 25 May and she was still considering her position when, out of the blue, Blatter announced to the world’s media that FIFA hadn’t ‘received any evidence whatsoever’ from the whistleblower and the matter was closed.

  Shortly after Blatter’s surprise pronouncement, Nasser Al-Khater, the communications chief of the Qatar supreme committee, had contacted his old colleague at her home in Washington and told her he knew she was the whistleblower. Al-Majid would later say Qatar had threatened to invoke a non-disclosure clause in her employment agreement to sue her for $1 million if she didn’t sign a statement retracting all her claims. This would have ruined her financially and put her children’s future in jeopardy. She buckled. Al-Khater accompanied Al-Majid to an attorney’s office in Washington on 1 July and sat next to her as she swore an affidavit confessing to her ‘lies’. The Qatar supreme committee invited the BBC to do some filming of their preparations for 2022 and then offered an exclusive interview with Al-Majid by phone when they arrived in Doha. ‘There was never anything suspicious or any wrongdoing on Qatar’s part,’ she told BBC’s Newsnight.44

  As for Chris Eaton, within a few months he was on his way to live and work permanently in Qatar. In January 2012 he announced to FIFA that he was taking his entire security team to work for the Doha-based International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) – the multi-million-dollar contract he had been lining up in his talks with the Qataris. Eaton sent his new boss, Mohammed Hanzab, a briefing note setting out a detailed timeline of the intelligence his team had built up over the past two years at FIFA and took with him a detailed knowledge of every in-house FIFA investigation before and after the World Cup bid.

  Eaton penned himself a note titled ‘Reasons for leaving’ as he prepared to go to Doha. The top item read: ‘It’s more salary, responsibility (all, not limited integrity issues) and greater potential for success.’ He also wrote an excoriating intelligence ‘brief’ on FIFA as he departed for his new job in Qatar in which he branded 11 of the 24 men on the executive committee ‘untrustworthy’ or ‘completely untrustworthy’ and was scathing of the men at the very top. The president, he wrote, was ‘the epitome of a political leader. Compromises on all for ambition. No evidence of personal compromise. Greedy and ma
nipulative. Maintains relationships and loyalty mostly through largesse. Manages FIFA like it’s a small club of colleagues. Ruthless.’ As for Jérôme Valcke, the secretary general: ‘Has a difficult post under the grace of the President . . . Had visions of replacing Blatter. Not now. Is charmingly arrogant and carless [sic] of integrity, but not directly complicit. Ruthless.’

  The departure was greeted with amazement by Valcke, who had first brought Eaton into FIFA. ‘Dear Chris, It takes me as a surprise! Why?’ Valcke asked. When Eaton’s departure leaked to the press, the secretary general finally lost his rag with the investigator. ‘Again we are the stupid people having to react. I have asked to keep this information until we can communicate positively and again and again we are fucked. Nice. So do whatever you want. I am going home,’ he fumed.

  While Bin Hammam awaited the outcome of the Freeh Group investigation in Doha, there was a final little favour to attend to for one of the FIFA voters. Franz Beckenbauer was bringing a group of German shipping magnates to Qatar to discuss trade deals with the Gulf state in June 2011, and Bin Hammam would be their host. Der Kaiser had retired from the FIFA executive committee in the spring after the World Cup vote and, since April, he had been working as a consultant for Erck Rickmers, the owner of the German shipping firm ER Capital Holdings. His contacts in Qatar from his days in world football were part of the big attraction. The firm owns companies which transport oil and gas on the high seas and, thanks to their new star hire, they were coming to Doha to discuss ‘a possible cooperation . . . with Qatari investment funds and investment opportunities in the maritime sector’.45

  Beckenbauer went back a long way with Rickmers. They were so close that his wife, Heidi, had been chosen to christen one of the firm’s new supertankers – named ER Bayern after the footballer’s old club – in a ceremony in Korea in August 2010. The shipping boss had followed up with a donation of $250,000 to Beckenbauer’s charitable foundation. Now he was accompanying the football legend to Doha, along with three other executives from his firm. They were joined by Marcus Hoefl, the sports agent who had arranged Bin Hammam’s mysterious rendezvous with Beckenbauer in London on the eve of his withdrawal from the presidential race the month before. Najeeb Chirakal booked the group’s flights and put them up in fine style in the Four Seasons Hotel.