The first family of crime: FIFA
The Guardian has a report on the International Sports Media and Marketing aka ISL, the now infamously bankrupt sports marketing company founded by Horst Dassler in the 1970s paying former FIFA president, Joao Havelange and his son-in-law, Ricardo Teixeira, a FIFA executive and former CBF president, millions of dollars in kickbacks for awarding them the 2002 and 2006 World Cup marketing and TV rights worth billions of dollars.
Swiss prosecutors based in the canton of Zug, launched an investigation linking these two men with the ISL kickbacks worth $42million as well as an additional $38 million as “commissions” to other FIFA and sports bigwigs which took place over a period of eight years from 1992 to 2000.
Under Sepp Blatter, who was Havelange’s hand picked successor, these investigations were halted in 2004 after a small amount of money from those amounts were repaid as settlements. Very little was known until an amount of 1m Swiss francs in the name of Joao Havelange was mistakenly directed to a FIFA account.
Now, after eight years under a court order and under pressure by various public interest organizations, the results of these investigations have been finally made public and they make for one fascinating reading of FIFA’s criminal activities. FIFA claims its all part of its reformation. But out of the ashes of ISL going belly up rose its successor, Infront Sports and Media. Guess who its CEO is? Philippe Blatter, the nephew of Sepp Blatter. The company was awarded the TV rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cup in many Asian countries.