A small group of FIFA’s top officials, including ex-President Sepp Blatter and his former second-in-command, Jerôme Valcke, allegedly paid each other bonuses and other incentives worth tens of millions of dollars, according to a cache of contracts disclosed by internal investigators on Friday.
The contracts, previously unknown to most of the top brass at football’s world governing body, also allegedly show bonuses for former Deputy Secretary-General Markus Kattner. Mr. Kattner was fired by FIFA last month for allegedly paying himself millions in secret bonuses. He didn’t respond to requests for comment at the time.
“The evidence appears to reveal a coordinated effort by three former top officials of FIFA to enrich themselves through annual salary increases, World Cup bonuses and other incentives totaling more than 79 million Swiss francs (S$109.9 million) – in just the last five years,” said Bill Burck, a partner with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the US law firm that has run an internal probe over the past year. The firm shared details of the contracts in a statement.
In his role as chief financial officer, Mr. Kattner was responsible for signing off on FIFA’s largest payments, including eight-figure bonuses that went to Mr. Blatter, according to the contracts.
Julio Grondona, a former head of FIFA’s finance committee, also received bonuses and other incentives, investigators said. Mr. Grondona died in 2014.
Mr. Kattner, and attorneys for Messrs. Blatter and Valcke didn’t immediately return requests for comment. FIFA’s former chief auditor Domenico Scala, who the investigators say was aware of some of the payments, declined to comment.
Some of the contracts for the bonuses paid to Messrs. Blatter and Valcke were discovered in a safe sitting in Mr. Kattner’s office at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Read the full article here.
OTHER WSJ.COM STORIES:
