Why has Sepp Blatter resigned as Fifa president?
Sepp Blatter has dramatically quit as Fifa president, just days after he was defiant in re-election for a fifth term and sparking a flurry of speculation over the future of world football and the fate of the next two World Cups in Russia and Qatar.
Under intense pressure from ongoing investigations by the FBI and Swiss prosecutors that have already led to 18 senior football executives being charged in the US on charges of money laundering, tax evasion and racketeering, Blatter said he had decided to step down.
But the 79-year-old Swiss, who defeated his Jordanian challenger Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein on Friday despite the mounting crisis, said he would stay on for at least six months to allow time for a proper election to replace him between December 2015 and March next year.
“While I have a mandate from the membership of Fifa, I do not feel that I have a mandate from the entire world of football – the fans, the players, the clubs, the people who live, breathe and love football as much as we all do at Fifa,” said Blatter, who has previously pressed on through an endless series of corruption allegations.
“Therefore, I have decided to lay down my mandate at an extraordinary elective Congress. I will continue to exercise my functions as Fifa President until that election.”
In the same press conference room where he had on Saturday faced down questions over Fifa’s culture of corruption and his knowledge of a $10m bribe alleged by US prosecutors to have been routed to former Concacaf president Jack Warner, Blatter cut a depleted figure.
“Since I shall not be a candidate, and am therefore now free from the constraints that elections inevitably impose, I shall be able to focus on driving far-reaching, fundamental reforms that transcend our previous efforts,” he claimed, complaining that he did not have enough control over those that sit around his executive committee table.
2 June 2015
The Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, resigns as head of football’s world governing body, ending a 17-year tenure dogged by corruption scandals.
Earlier in the day, Fifa’s secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, comes under pressure after evidence emerges showing he was aware of a $10m payment from South African officials to the former Concacaf president Jack Warner, a payment described by US investigators as a bribe.
29 May 2015
Blatter wins a fifth term as Fifa president after urging voting countries to move on from the corruption scandal that burst into the open two days earlier.
27 May 2015
Seven Fifa officials are arrested by Swiss police in Zurich after a request from US authorities. The suspects are alleged to have been involved in a corruption scandal totalling more than $150m. Hours after the arrests, Swiss prosecutors open a criminal investigation into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.
November 2014
The US lawyer Michael Garcia complains that his investigation into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process has been misrepresented in a summary version published by Hans-Joachim Eckert, the chair of Fifa’s ethics committee. Fifa says the matter is closed.
November 2014
The former Fifa executive Chuck Blazer is reported to be cooperating with an FBI investigation into corruption at the governing body.
March 2012
Garcia is appointed as chair of an investigatory chamber set up by Blatter to examine the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process.
May 2011
Mohammed bin Hammam, the Fifa executive committee member for Qatar, withdraws his bid for the Fifa presidency over allegations he offered $40,000 in bribes to Caribbean delegates in return for supporting his campaign. He is eventually banned from football for life.
May 2011
The Football Association chair, Lord Triesman, uses parliamentary privilege to allege that four Fifa executive committee members asked for favours in return for supporting England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup. They are later cleared. Blatter denies Fifa is in crisis and tells a news conference there was no case to answer over the four officials. He also says there was no evidence from the Sunday Times to back up its allegations that Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma had been paid to vote for Qatar’s World Cup bid.
December 2010
Russia is awarded the 2018 World Cupand the 2022 tournament is controversially awarded to Qatar despite concerns about high temperatures raised by Fifa’s own technical report.
October 2010
The Sunday Times claims two members of Fifa’s executive committee, Reynald Temarii of Tahiti and Amos Adamu of Nigeria, offered to sell their votes to undercover reporters in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting contest.
The pair are provisionally suspended by Fifa’s ethics committee, pending further investigations. Four other officials, all former executive committee members, are also provisionally suspended.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN