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Fifa President Sepp Blatter is being investigated by Swiss police over his role in a secret deal to repay more than £1m worth of bribes pocketed by football officials, BBC Panorama revealed in a programme screened on Sunday 11 June 2006. Panorama interviewed employees of the bankrupt ISL marketing company who confirmed the company had paid bribes to Fifa officials over a period of nearly 20 years.
Fifa headquarters were raided by Investigating Magistrate Thomas Hildbrand last November and documents seized from the offices of President Blatter and his General Secretary, Urs Linsi. Mr Blatter refused to be interviewed by Panorama but has emphatically denied all the allegations. The Swiss authorities will not discuss Hildbrand's investigation but Panorama has discovered he was in court in mid-April obtaining an order to acquire documents to further his inquiries.
The ISL company was set up in 1982 and soon acquired the marketing and television rights to the Olympic Games, the World athletics championships and the football World Cup. Rumours have circulated for years that senior sports officials took bribes in return for these lucrative contracts. ISL collapsed in 2001 and when the liquidator took over the company's bank records he found evidence of bribes. Some officials repaid the money but when others declined, the liquidator went to court. The result was a secret deal in early 2004 to repay more. Magistrate Hildbrand is investigating the possibility that Fifa repaid the bribes rather than the officials who took them in the first place. ISL insiders told Panorama that the bribes were paid systematically - 'like salaries' said one, through a secretive Liechtenstein foundation and an offshore bank account in the Caribbean.
Panorama was banned from Fifa press conferences for asking questions about corruption. The programme showed their reporter fruitlessly trying to ask Blatter questions. When the BBC got another reporter into a press conference, attempts were made to stop him asking questions, Blatter having already left the event. The programme also alleged that vote-rigging helped put president Sepp Blatter in power, involving the Trinidad and Tobago official who is a Fifa vice-president and is in charge of the Caribbean and Central American federation. It was alleged that a member of his office staff cast a vote for absent Haiti at a Fifa election. It was also alleged that his family travel company had benefitted from exclusive rights for travel packages for 'Soccah Warrior' fans to go to Germany.
Although this matter is still being dealt with through the judicial process, the programme raised disturbing questions about the governance of world football.
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