Key dates in the world football corruption scandal ahead of FIFA’s decision on Monday when to hold a new presidential election:
+ December 2, 2010
FIFA awards the 2018 World Cup to Russia — with England last in the vote — and the 2022 tournament to Qatar ahead of the United States, South Korea and Australia. A FIFA evaluation report had said a World Cup in Qatar in June-July would be a “potential health risk for players, officials, the FIFA family and spectators.”
Six FIFA executive committee members were suspended one month before the vote following a report by British newspaper the Sunday Times that they offered to sell World Cup votes for cash.
+ June 1, 2011
Sepp Blatter is returned for fourth term as president and vows a reform agenda. FIFA had launched an inquiry into alleged illegal payments one month before his election. On June 23, FIFA banned Mohamed bin Hammam, a former FIFA president from Qatar, for life for misconduct. After appealing to the international sports arbitration court and then being suspended again, Hamman resigns all positions in December 2012.
+ April 30, 2013
The FIFA ethics committee says Joao Havelange and former executive committee members Ricardo Teixeira and Nicolas Leoz accepted illegal payments from collapsed sports marketing company ISL. Blatter is cleared of any misconduct.
+ May 6, 2013
FIFA’s ethics committee suspends Chuck Blazer, former general secretary of CONCACAF, for ethics breaches. Blazer had by then been working undercover for US anti-corruption investigators for two years.
+ December 17, 2014
Former US attorney Michael Garcia resigns as head of FIFA’s investigatory body in protest at the handling of his report into corruption. A summary released by Hans Joachim Eckert, head of FIFA’s adjudicatory chamber, cleared Russia and Qatar of any wrongdoing in their World Cup bids and said there should be no new vote. Garcia said the summary gave “incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions” in his full report.
+ May 27, 2015
Police raid a Zurich hotel on the eve of a FIFA Congress and arrest seven top football officials including two FIFA vice presidents. The seven are among 14 people wanted in the United States where Attorney General Loretta Lynch said an investigation had uncovered decades of bribery in world football amounting to more than $150 million. Federal racketeering charges are unveiled and FIFA executive members accused of taking bribes from sports marketing companies and buying and selling votes for South Africa to get the 2010 World Cup.
+ May 29, 2015
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The 79-year-old Blatter is reelected for a fifth term as FIFA president, beating Prince Ali bin Al Hussein by 133 votes to 77 in the second round of voting. “I’m not perfect. Nobody is perfect. But we will do a good job together,” he told the Congress.
+ June 2, 2015
Just four days after his election triumph — but with the corruption storm still roaring — Blatter says he will organise a new election to choose a new president. “I don’t feel I have a mandate from the entire world of football,” Blatter said of his stunning change of heart.
+ July 15, 2015
Switzerland hands over Jeffrey Webb, one of the seven detained FIFA suspects, to the United States. The deposed FIFA vice president and president of CONCACAF, the North and Central American football confederation, is accused of taking bribes for television contracts for football tournaments. He made his first court appearance in New York on Saturday.
By AFP