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Sepp Blatter to Resign as FIFA President Sepp Blatter to Resign as FIFA President
(35 minutes later)
Sepp Blatter said Tuesday that he would resign from the presidency of FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, in the wake of a corruption inquiry, an extraordinary turn just four days after he was re-elected and defiantly insisted that he was blameless and committed to cleaning up the organization. Sepp Blatter, who led world soccer’s governing body for 17 years and had just won re-election for a fifth four-year term, resigned his position at a hastily called news conference in Zurich on Tuesday evening in the wake of an international corruption inquiry.
Mr. Blatter, 79, said he would ask FIFA to schedule a new election for his replacement as soon as possible. The next FIFA congress is scheduled to meet in May 2016, but he acknowledged that the organization could not wait that long for new leadership given the current situation. In a short speech delivered at the headquarters of FIFA, which oversees global soccer, Mr. Blatter said that “FIFA needs a profound restructuring” and that he had decided to step away from the organization for which he had worked in various positions for 40 years. Mr. Blatter, 79, who spoke in French, then referred to his recent re-election by FIFA’s 209 member nations when he said, “Although the members of FIFA have given me the new mandate, this mandate does not seem to be supported by everybody in the world of football.”
At a brief, hastily convened news conference at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Mr. Blatter said that “FIFA needs a profound restructuring.” Mr. Blatter’s resignation is not immediate; according to Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, who spoke to the news media after Mr. Blatter, a special meeting of FIFA’s member nations will be called to elect a new president. According to FIFA’s rules, there must be at least four months’ notice given to members for such a meeting, so Mr. Scala indicated that the likely window for a new election is from December 2015 to March 2016.
“I appreciate and love FIFA more than anything else,” he said. “And I only want to do the best for FIFA.” Mr. Blatter declined to take questions after his remarks. Mr. Blatter will continue his duties in the meantime, but will focus on a program of reform that he said would be driven by Mr. Scala.
Mr. Blatter is regarded as the most powerful executive in sports, ruling FIFA autocratically while brushing off frequent accusations that the organization was corrupt. He has worked for FIFA since 1975, and has been president since 1998. “For years, we have worked hard to put in place administrative reforms, but it is plain to me that while these must continue, they are not enough,” Mr. Blatter said. “We need deep-rooted structural change.”
Domenico Scala of Italy, who leads the FIFA audit and compliance committee, will take the lead in managing the handover. He said reforms would include “fundamental changes” to the way FIFA is structured. Mr. Blatter mentioned several components of reform that he found necessary, including a reshaping of the powerful executive committee. In a somewhat strange twist, given his lengthy presence as FIFA’s leader, he also noted the importance of term limits.
Mr. Blatter said he would serve until a new election. Mr. Scala, in his remarks, said “nothing will be off the table” in terms of reforms for FIFA, whose image has been undeniably marred by the seemingly constant shadow of controversy. Changes could include a greater focus on transparency — including publishing the compensation earned by the president and executive committee members — as well as more stringent and uniform integrity checks, a proposal which had been previously suggested, and rejected, by members.
Mr. Blatter has been praised for extending soccer’s reach to less developed nations and for raising the profile of the women’s game. But he has been dodging scandals almost from the moment he was elected. “There is significant work to be done in order to regain the trust of the public and to fundamentally reform the way in which people see FIFA,” Mr. Scala said. “These steps will ensure that the organization cannot be used by those seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of the game.”
Mr. Blatter’s downfall began only six days ago, when the Swiss authorities arrested several top soccer officials at their hotel in Zurich at the behest of the United States, which indicted 14 people. Pressure on Mr. Blatter mounted in recent days, beginning even before Friday’s FIFA Congress, at which he was re-elected. Two days before the election, Swiss police officials — acting on behalf of United States authorities — arrested several top soccer officials, including two FIFA vice presidents, at a five-star Zurich hotel, and the United States Department of Justice handed down a 47-count indictment alleging widespread corruption within the organization. The Swiss police also revealed that day that a separate investigation, which is focused on alleged improprieties involving the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, had led investigators to seize documents and records from FIFA’s offices.
The federal indictment listed 47 counts, including bribery, fraud and money laundering. It said that soccer officials treated FIFA business decisions as chits to be traded for personal wealth, whether through convoluted financial deals or old-fashioned briefcases full of cash. Mr. Blatter was not directly implicated in either investigation, but The New York Times reported late Monday that Mr. Blatter’s top deputy, Jérôme Valcke, had been identified by American officials as a person linked to wire transfers involving bank payments believed to be bribes related to World Cup bids. Mr. Valcke denied any involvement, and FIFA released a statement on Tuesday morning in response to the article that tried to distance Mr. Valcke from the transaction.
Despite the arrests, Mr. Blatter was re-elected to another four-year term two days later, by a vote of 133-73, over a challenger, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan. Early Tuesday evening, however, it was not Mr. Valcke who stepped to the microphone in the press briefing room. Instead it was Mr. Blatter, who just days earlier had promised that “I will be in command of this boat called FIFA and we will bring it back to shore.”
Earlier Tuesday, FIFA responded to an article by The New York Times linking Jérôme Valcke, FIFA’s secretary general, to payments made in 2008 that investigators believe amounted to $10 million in bribes. FIFA said in a statement that the payments, which are at the center of the United States Department of Justice investigation that led to the 47-count indictment against soccer officials and sports marketing executives, were approved in 2007 by Julio Grondona. Mr. Grondona, who was the chairman of FIFA’s finance committee at the time, died last year.