Sony Corp. (6758) and Adidas AG stepped to
the lead of corporate sponsors pressing FIFA, soccer’s governing
body, to fully investigate the latest allegations that Qatar won
the right to host the 2022 World Cup through improper means.
“The negative tenor of the public debate around FIFA at
the moment is neither good for football nor for FIFA and its
partners,” Adidas, based in Herzogenaurach, Germany, said
yesterday. Sony said it expects FIFA “to adhere to its
principles.”
Visa Inc. and Coca-Cola Co., two more of FIFA’s biggest
partners, also expressed concern after the London-based Sunday
Times published allegations for a second week against Qatar’s
surprising World Cup winning bid in December 2010. The newspaper
said documents and e-mails leaked by an unidentified senior FIFA
official show Qatar’s former FIFA Vice President Mohamed bin
Hammam paid millions of dollars to soccer officials around the
world to secure their backing for Qatar to host the 2022 event.
Qatar denies the allegations.
“As a FIFA partner, we expect these allegations to be
investigated appropriately,” Sony’s Tokyo-based spokesman
George Boyd said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “We
continue to expect FIFA to adhere to its principles of
integrity, ethics and fair play across all aspects of its
operation.”
Photographer: Julian Finney/FIFA via Getty Images
A file photo shows Qatar’s former FIFA vice-president Mohamed bin Hammam in Singapore, on August 11, 2010. Close
A file photo shows Qatar’s former FIFA vice-president Mohamed bin Hammam in Singapore,… Read More
Open
Photographer: Julian Finney/FIFA via Getty Images
A file photo shows Qatar’s former FIFA vice-president Mohamed bin Hammam in Singapore, on August 11, 2010.
2010 Choice
FIFA is in contact with commercial partners including
Adidas, Sony and Visa, said Thierry Weil, the organization’s
marketing director.
“They have 100 percent confidence in the investigation
currently being conducted by FIFA’s independent Ethics
Committee,” Weil said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “Our
sponsors have not requested anything that is not covered by the
ongoing investigation.”
Since the December 2010 choice of Qatar, which beat
competition from the U.S., Australia, South Korea and Japan,
allegations have dogged the Arab country and several officials.
Michael Garcia, a former U.S. federal prosecutor who has
been investigating the claims for more than a year, said last
week he’ll file a report next month to German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, who’ll decide if there is a case. Eckert presides over
the adjudicatory arm of FIFA’s ethics committee.
Corporate Reaction
“We expect FIFA will take the appropriate actions to
respond to the report and its recommendations,” said Melissa
Cassar, a spokeswoman for Foster City, California-based Visa, in
an e-mail. “We will continue to monitor its internal
investigation.”
Hyundai Motor Co. is “confident that FIFA is taking these
allegations seriously and that the Investigatory Chamber of the
FIFA Ethics Committee will conduct a thorough investigation,”
the South Korean FIFA partner said in an e-mail.
“Anything that detracts from the mission and ideals of the
FIFA World Cup is a concern to us, but we are confident that
FIFA is taking these allegations very seriously and is
investigating them thoroughly,” Alison Brubaker, a spokeswoman
for Atlanta-based Coke, wrote in an e-mail.
Anheuser-Busch inBev NV also is monitoring the situation,
Laura Vallis, a spokeswoman for the Leuven, Belgium-based
company, in an e-mail. “We expect FIFA to take all necessary
steps to address the issue”
Garcia will address FIFA’s members at its annual meeting in
Sao Paulo this week. The 2014 World Cup in Brazil starts a day
after the meeting’s close on June 12.
Withdrawn Candidate
Bin Hammam, who in 2011 withdrew as the only candidate to
challenge Sepp Blatter for FIFA’s presidency after being accused
of offering bribes to Caribbean voters, said in a phone message
last week he didn’t want to comment on the allegations reported
by the Sunday Times.
“Frankly there is nothing to respond about,” he told
Bloomberg News. “Let me enjoy my new life.”
FIFA’s top partners, with the exception of Sony, have
committed to backing the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, with Adidas
signing on through to 2030. World Cup-related sponsorship
brought in $404 million in 2013, according to FIFA’s annual
statement.
BP Plc, whose Castrol unit is a World Cup sponsor, expects
FIFA “to deal with this issue in the right and proper manner,”
Sheila Williams, a spokeswoman for the London-based company,
said by telephone yesterday. “We are concentrating our
efforts” on the current World Cup.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Tariq Panja in Rio de Janeiro at
tpanja@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Christopher Elser at
celser@bloomberg.net
Bruce Rule, Kevin Miller
Sony Joins Adidas in Pressing FIFA on Probe of Qatar
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