Law-enforcement officials believe that FIFA secretary general Jérôme Valcke moved money related to an alleged World Cup vote bribe from FIFA bank accounts to an account controlled by arrested FIFA official Jack Warner, according to a report in The New York Times by William K. Rashbaum and Matt Apuzzo.
Valcke, FIFA President Sepp Blatter's No. 2 man, was not arrested and isn't accused of any wrongdoing.
Valcke told The Times that "he had not authorized the payment and did not have the power to do so."
FIFA told The Times that the finance committee chairman, Julio Grondona, who has since died, authorized the payment.
This is all related to one of the most damning allegations in the Department of Justice's 164-page indictment of nine current and former FIFA officials, which concerns an alleged $10 million bribe made to soccer official Jack Warner in exchange for supporting South Africa's 2010 World Cup bid.
In May 2004, the indictment alleges, a group of officials representing South Africa's World Cup bid promised Warner the South African government would make a $10 million payment to the Warner-controlled Caribbean Football Union to "support the African diaspora" if he and two other executive committee members backed the country's bid.
Warner allegedly agreed to take the $10 million, which the DOJ calls a bribe, and South Africa won the hosting rights to the 2010 tournament.
Four years after vote, according to the indictment, the South African officials were still unable to make the payment directly from the South African government, so instead $10 million in FIFA money that was supposed to go to South Africa was allegedly sent to Warner-controlled accounts.
The money was moved in installments, according to the indictment:
In fact, on January 2, 2008, January 31, 2008 and March 7, 2008, a high-ranking FIFA official caused payments of $616,000, $1,600,000, and $7,784,000 - totaling $10 million - to be wired from a FIFA account in Switzerland to a Bank of America correspondent account in New York, New York, for credit to accounts held in the names of CFU and CONCACAF, but controlled by the defendant JACK WARNER, at Republic Bank in Trinidad and Tobago.
According to The Times, law-enforcement believes Valcke was the person who moved the money. Warner allegedly kept a "substantial portion of the funds" for his personal use, according to the indictment.
The South African Football Association said on Monday that the payment wasn't a bribe.
FIFA has released a full statement responding to the Times report. They claim that the $10 million payment was an official part of South Africa's World Cup legacy program, and it was done in accordance with FIFA rules:
Following claims made by the US authorities in relation to a USD 10m payment made by FIFA on behalf of the South African Football Association FIFA comments as follows:
In 2007, as part of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, the South African Government approved a USD 10m project to support the African diaspora in Caribbean countries as part of the World Cup legacy.
At the request of the South African Government, and in agreement with the South African Football Association (SAFA), FIFA was asked to process the project’s funding by withholding USD 10m from the Local Organising Committee’s (LOC) operational budget and using that to finance the Diaspora Legacy Programme.
SAFA instructed FIFA that the Diaspora Legacy Programme should be administered and implemented directly by the President of CONCACAF who at that time was Deputy Chairman of the Finance Committee and who should act as the fiduciary of the Diaspora Legacy Programme Fund of USD 10m.
The payments totalling USD 10m were authorised by the then chairman of the Finance Committee and executed in accordance with the Organisation Regulations of FIFA. FIFA did not incur any costs as a result of South Africa’s request because the funds belonged to the LOC. Both the LOC and SAFA adhered to the necessary formalities for the budgetary amendment.
Neither the Secretary General Jérôme Valcke nor any other member of FIFA’s senior management were involved in the initiation, approval and implementation of the above project.
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