Quintin Jardine's blog

Latest news from FIFA’s ‘You couldn’t make it up’ department, is that the organisation has opened ethics proceedings against its own president.

This was posted today on its website.

‘On 26 May 2011, FIFA Executive Committee member Mohamed bin Hammam has requested the FIFA Ethics Committee to open ethics proceedings against FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter on the basis that, in the report submitted by FIFA Executive Committee member Chuck Blazer earlier this week, FIFA Vice-President Jack A. Warner would have informed the FIFA President in advance about alleged cash payments to delegations attending a special meeting of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) apparently organised jointly by Jack A. Warner and Mohamed bin Hammam on 10 and 11 May 2011 and that the FIFA President would have had no issue with these.’

That means that both candidates in the forthcoming presidential election are under investigation, and will be effectively on trial at a meeting in Zurich on Sunday. It will be chaired by Petrus Damaseb, deputy head of the Ethics Committee, a London trained barrister who is, in the real world, Judge President of the Namibian High Court. What’s going to happen? I can hardly wait to find out, but I will bet on one thing in advance. If Blatter has to go, he will look for a way to instal one of his place-men as an interim successor. What will follow that? Possibly, the biggest bonfire of files that Switzerland has ever seen?