Jerome Valcke, to use a GOT analogy is Night’s Watch to Sepp Blatter
Jerome Valcke, the FIFA secretary general seems to have largely dodged the intense scrutiny of US investigations into large scale and systemic FIFA corruption. There seems to be a protective aura which is only too natural because Valcke’s implication in bribery and vote buying which led to the indictments of 14 FIFA officials and three others arrested brings it disturbingly close to Sepp Blatter himself. Thus, when US authorities fingered Valcke as the high ranking official authorizing a legacy payment widely seen as a bribe from South African football officials to Jack Warner’s account, FIFA scrambled to strenuously deny Valcke’s role in alleged vote buying, naming the official as Julio Grondona, the Argentinian FA’s president and chairman of FIFA’s finance committee who died last year.
Indeed, the former head of FIFA marketing has led a chameleon’s life forced to resign after a New York court found he had lied when denying pursuing a separate sponsorship deal with VISA, in violation of an existing arrangement with MasterCard. FIFA was forced to pay a $90 million fine after MasterCard took legal action, halving the revenue of the eight year deal. Valcke denied he had done anything improper.
“I feel I am clean,” he says. “I would feel dirty if what I had done between Visa and MasterCard… had been always to push for a higher price. But that was never the case. [Our] goal [from the sponsorship] was $180m and we never used the competition to increase the price.”
That was in 2007. FIFA at that time took an exceedingly dim view as it feared this breach of trust would turn off corporate partners, a small group assiduously cultivated by the organization giving it unprecedented financial clout. “FIFA’s negotiations breached its business principles,” the governing body said. “FIFA cannot possibly accept such conduct among its own employees.”
Valcke was forced to “part company” along with three others. Six days after FIFA settled with VISA, he was rehired by Sepp Blatter with a huge upgrade, as FIFA’s secretary general occupying Blatter’s old position. This rising out of the ashes was reward for Blatter recognizing Valcke as the slick operator most responsible for forging ties with the corporate world, a close relationship he parlayed into improved deals that netted FIFA well over $1bn, an increase of 50% between the 2006 and the 2010 World Cup.
In David Owen’s article, it is clear Valcke has a missionary’s zeal to portray FIFA as a cleanly run ship which has modernized and divested from the old system of commissions to do business. FIFA was attracting business professionals who were a world removed from the old boys cabal. There was also a strain of familiar denial echoed when asked if present executive members had benefited from bribes. He himself was above board. Very revealingly, Valcke also mentioned FIFA was building cash reserves of approximately $1bn in the event of a World Cup being cancelled. This is in line with FIFA awarding countries that assumed all liability like Qatar, the World Cup.
Now, it seems Valcke adept at rationalizing his actions might not be so clean himself. Days after issuing a denial through email he had anything to do with the $10m payment to Jack Warner’s account after US authorities zeroed on him, a letter written by former South African FA president, Molefi Oliphant to Valcke specifically instructing FIFA withhold $10m from the Organizing Committee’s budget and use it for the Diaspora Legacy program administered by the CONCACAF president. That $10m is seen as a bribe for Jack Warner, CONCACAF’s president for voting to secure South Africa, the 2010 World Cup. US authorities have claimed that part of this payment was also used to pay off Chuck Blazer, Warner’s deputy and original whistleblower who was arrested and pleaded guilty to racketeering and bribery. The letter brings to question the extent of Blatter’s involvement in arranging this large sum of money and whether he had personally approved of it. Just like he did with the MasterCard settlement, Valcke justified this development in eerily similar language.
“I’m beyond reproach and I certainly don’t feel guilty. So I don’t even have to justify that I’m innocent,” he added. There is clearly a pattern.
Valcke’s involvement has widened to the 2014 World Cup and the FBI is now focusing on his relationship with Ricardo Texieira, former CBF president and head of Brazil’s World Cup organizing committee till he fled to Miami in 2012.
Blatter has stepped down as president but as he’s repeatedly stated he’s innocent and cannot be held responsible for some bad apples. Much of his acquittal in the court of public opinion lies in increasing the degrees of separation. When it taints trusted sidekicks like Valcke, the foundation starts to look very, very shaky. Valcke ends the Owen interview when asked if he was disturbed by these constant allegation of corruption saying this:
Valcke is clear that it does matter. “Who is happy to be on the front line – to have the press saying, ‘You are corrupt people’ or ‘You are a corrupt organisation’ or ‘Your sport is corrupt?’ No one can be happy about that.”