IT READS LIKE some kind of Cold War-era thriller with its government sources, former MI6 officers, high-level intelligence gathering and international espionage.
And just like any other nail-biter, we’re still not sure how it’s all going to end.
The relentless allegations into the bidding processes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups have been ramped up a notch with some fresh material.
The House of Commons, Culture, Media and Sport select committee has published a previously-unseen document sent to them by The Sunday Times which claims sources told them how England’s 2018 bid used ‘intelligence-gathering and surveillance’ on the other countries submitting bids for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments.
The sources detail how the bid team allegedly ‘paid private companies and individual consultants to spy on its rivals in the run-up to the vote in December 2010. Non-disclosure agreements were signed with each of the individuals and companies who were paid to gather intelligence.’
There are further allegations that the England bid received intelligence from British embassies around the world.
The information gathered and compiled pointed to corruption on a massive scale, according to the newspaper’s ex-MI6 source who’s quoted as saying:
“We did have intelligence that states paid bribes to Fifa members … The [England] bid was never going to win because of the corruption on the other side. It was the scale of the defeat that was the shock.”
Sources also alleged significant involvement from Russian president Vladimir Putin in Russia’s bid and that he reportedly tasked a group of oligarchs with doing ‘whatever was necessary’ to ensure the bid was successful. Again the MI6 source is quoted by The Sunday Times in great detail:
What you need to remember about this is the way this was done in Russia is that nothing was written down. Don’t expect me or anyone else to produce a document with Putin’s signature saying please X bribe Y with this amount in this way. He’s not going to do that. Putin is an ex intelligence officer. Everything he does has to be deniable. Sochi (2014 Winter Olympics host city) was a complete pigs’ trough in terms of corruption and the World Cup is five times as big.”
The Sunday Times’ document also details the attempted pacts made between bidding countries though the England 2018 bid team allegedly suffered major embarrassment when trying to collude with South Korea.
The deal was that Dr Chung Mong-Joon was to vote for England 2018 and Geoff Thompson, England’s voter, would vote for South Korea’s 2022 bid. According to the Times’ FA source, England were double-crossed.
We did a deal with the South Koreans whereby we would vote for them and they would vote for us and they then didn’t vote for us. I mean it tells you all about the English bid doesn’t it. We even fucked up fiddling it. Even the illicit bit was a fuck up because they didn’t vote for us. They knew the next day … So David [Dein] goes up to the South Koreans and says ‘Why didn’t you vote for us?’ and the bloke said, ‘That’s football’.”
