Omertà

The two women who acted as whistleblowers over the multiple corruptions within FIFA have been publicly traduced by Judge Hans-Joachim Eckert.
Bonita Mersiades and Phaedra Almajid both now live in fear for their families and themselves.
These FIFA corruptions have effectively been whitewashed in a secret report at the expense of the lives of two women (Almajid now has FBI protection).

This will no doubt discourage any future moral and ethical stances over the utter lack of integrity in global football just as the treatments of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange would tend to make any political whistleblower think twice.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the FIFA Affair (Qatargate) is that it is a clear indication of how the locus of football criminality has shifted towards the blackest of markets in recent years. In the current scenario, Michael Garcia is being painted as a white knight riding to the rescue against the smoke-filled backroom deals and payments of bribes and other enhancing consumerisms of FIFA.

We discussed this in a previous article when Garcia was appointed to this role: "A parallel example of murkiness is at FIFA where the Secretary General of Interpol, Ronald Noble, supported the appointment of Michael Garcia as FIFA chief investigator of corruption when Garcia's review of the FIFA/ISL scandal is seen as a cover up by Reform consultant Michael Pieth and FIFA judge Hans-Joachim Eckert."

Manus manum lavat.

So we have a standard Italian structure being the cover up of choice - football needs a mani pulite (clean hands) approach to dealing with corruption.

But the cover ups spread further.
There are four primary bodies addressing matchfixing in world football - Interpol, Europol, Early Warning and Federbet.
None are fit for purpose and all have private hidden agendas.
If an individual chooses to whistleblow a corrupted match to any of these bodies, the most likely action is inaction.

And the national associations and leagues are no better.
We would not dream of disclosing our evidences of matchfixing in the Premier League to Richard Scudamore or the FA.
And, higher up the feeding chain Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, understands that presenting evidence of matchfixing in Spain results in absolutely no reaction.

And over the last two days in London, the FA has launched the Sports Betting Integrity Forum with inputs from all the main British/Gibraltan bodies who are only concerned about matchfixing when they are outside the loop of insider trading.
All five bookmakers involved either accept insider money and/or actively orchestrate criminalities.

On the bases established by these whitewashes, the foundations of future corruptions are built.

Yesterday, Narayanaswami Srinivasan was laughably cleared of orchestrating matchfixing and spotfixing in IPL cricket matches in 2013 despite the evidence of taped conversations and his close alliances with the underground bookmaking world.
Earlier this year, he had remarkably been appointed as chairman of the International Cricket Council despite the scandals swirling around him.
What message does this send to the participants in the new IPL football expansion (and, by the way, it is surely not totally surprising that the three main English participants in this competition are Michael Chopra, Peter Reid and that undischarged bankrupt of dubious integrity, David James)?

These sporting corruptions parallel clearly with the world of mainstream capitalism and offshore financial centres.
For example, Grace Perez-Navarro of the OECD thinks that money laundering will be a historical anomaly by 2018.
It won't.
Lack of staff, lack of backing, lack of expertise, lack of regulation, lack of political will and yet to be created distortions of integrity will see to that.

Similarly amusing is the hyperreality that the UK police are to utilise the expertise of the Royal Bank of Scotland to address financial fraud in markets...
... that would be the same Royal Bank of Scotland that has just been found guilty of currency benchmark manipulations!

Manus manum lavat.

Global corruption requires global action and global regulation, not internalised double-teaming.

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