Undisclosed and illegal payments, kickbacks, and bribes became a way of doing business at FIFA.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Until the nineteen-seventies, Western countries paid little attention to corruption overseas, and bribery was seen as an unpleasant but necessary part of doing business there. In some European countries, businesses were even allowed to deduct bribes as an expense.
Footballers are an easy target. They are offered big lines of credit. Every sport is vulnerable; it's such a big gambling industry, and there are problems with syndicates in other countries.
It's easy not to bribe. But it's not so easy to keep a business running at the same time.
The source of wealth is from individuals with little or no history of interest in the game, who have happened upon football as a means of serving some hidden agenda.
Bribes are not offered in such a way that you can prove them, and in order to prove that I didn't accept a bribe, I had to run.
If someone really wants my company's business, why shouldn't he be able to do everything he can - including paying me off - to get that business? Because bribery encourages people to make decisions based on the wrong criteria, which means in the business world that it distorts the efficient allocation of resources.
Rather than let their product compete fully and fairly in the marketplace, FalconStor resorted to bribery and graft to win important contracts in a scheme that reached the highest levels of the company.
FIFA stands for discipline, respect, fair-play, not just on the field of play, but in our society as well.
Fifa cannot sit by and see greed rule the football world. Nor shall we.
There are standards of the game that FIFA governs and promises to uphold.