The FBI had somebody wearing a wire at the London Olympics to capture the FIFA corruption taking place in the margins. What were the British authorities doing? Nothing.
Britain prides itself as having in London the world’s leading financial centre. Substantial assets, both financial and real estate, from FIFA corruption are located in London. But Britain has taken over the crown from Switzerland as the major financial destination which will always protect ill-gotten wealth.
Alisher Usmanov played a major role as bagman for the corrupt Russian World Cup bid, particularly with delegates from FIFA’s Asian Confederation. His place as Britain’s third richest resident is very obviously based on extreme Russian corruption and he rose to power and wealth solely with the use of gangster muscle and contacts he gained and expanded while serving a prison sentence for blackmail. But he is a billionaire and beloved by the City of London so there is no danger of him ever being investigated in the UK.
That a key figure in FIFA corruption over Russia’s World Cup bid, is undisturbed in his large shareholding in Arsenal FC, says everything about the complicity of the British establishment.
Usmanov’s friend Gulnara Karimova is a startling example. She is now under formal investigation in Switzerland, France, Sweden and the Netherlands over the glaringly corrupt origins of her billions. Only a fake house arrest by her father has prevented her real arrest. Yet in the UK, where she has three homes including one in the No.1 Hyde Park criminals’ hangout, where she shops regularly and her son is at university, there is no move against her whatsoever.
I am delighted to see the moves against FIFA. But to me they illustrate very plainly what a corrupt stinking hole London has become.
Very true, this lamentable state of affairs exists, and sadly as yet the extent of corruption and moral turpitude of the UK PLC has not dawned on the standard issue citizen Jo.
Money talks. It always has. I could never understand how oligarchs like Usmanov, Berezovsky and Abramovich could suddenly own former state-owned assets without seriously shady dealings. There is a saying in Russia about some fish being able to swim in muddy waters.
“Less than a month later then new President Vladimir Putin commented indirectly on his policy towards the oligarchs. “In Russian we have a saying regarding catching fish in muddy waters. There are fishermen who have already caught a lot of fish, and would like to keep the system as it is,” Putin remarked. Soon after Putin’s deputy chief of the presidential staff, Vladislav Surkov, suggested that the Kremlin would not punish these “fishermen” for their past activities and said he believed Russia should “not settle accounts.” There was an opinion that going back on the results of the privatization auctions would do the country no good.”
That comes from a eulogy to Vladimir Potanin.
http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/business/vladimir-potanin/
Here are Getty images of a few of these oligarchs meeting in Moscow this year, including Potanin and Usmanov. I quite like Putin but not some of the people he is obliged to deal with as a head of state.
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/alisher-usmanov-russian-billionaire-and-owner-of-usm-news-photo/466869960
Anyway, let’s hope underdogs Aston Villa can do over Arsenal at the weekend! 🙂
The pang is US intervention – to block the apartheid, racist Israel vote I ask.
http://stopwar.org.uk/news/fifa-vote-to-kick-israel-out-of-world-football-conveniently-blocked-by-us-intervention
Qatar winning, currently waging Takfiri hate in Syria, and offering temperatures of 50 degrees C, was the last straw for this bribery machine FIFA.
The slow realisation that Islamic State is a US creation was about to drag the squeaky clean image of sport into the gutter of Saudi schizophrenic ethnic violence.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article187700.html
Corruption starts at the lowest levels and becomes so ingrained it just gets accepted. Ironic that the FBI were at the London Olympics, set in the London Borough of Newham, where Landlord corruption is rife. In a blaze of paradoxical publicity Tessa Jowell tried to boost her image as a London Mayor contender recently by joining Newham officials in raiding allegedly corrupt and criminal landlords. Interesting she didn’t mention how many of the Boroughs all Labour councillors are Landlords who started building their empires by living in social housing, nor mention Cllr Noor who is suspended whilst an investigation takes place into his unlicensed premises and his property that does not have planning permission to operate as a residential block. This low level activity neatly demonstrates that wrongdoing is just ignored by the authorities until it gets so blatant that even they can’t ignore it. Meantime the majority of us have to live with the stink. As an aside, whatever happened to Jowell’s husband and his connections with Berlusconi? Where is he now?
Bob Smith evidently has not heard of Supreme Justice Jackson’s remark;
It is the trickle down effect, and not the osmosis, a poor try to deflect from the actualities by blaming the “Lowest Levels for the ingrained corruption”
Register for this….
http://www.fcpaconference.com/london/
Yes, I agree. Those arrested are small fish working for a basically inconsequential and frivolous industry. Clearly the arrests are intended as a warning to anyone thinking of defying the US, and perhaps are also linked to FIFA’s stance on Israel. The raids suggest to the masses that the authorities are rooting out corruption, when the opposite is the case, and they are merely picking victims who don’t toe the line.
Britain has taken over the crown from Switzerland as the major financial destination which will always protect ill-gotten wealth.
Got it in one. And as the City’s contribution to UK plc is indispensably huge, (and there’s not much else coming in) this will continue even in the face of civil unrest.
a basically inconsequential and frivolous industry
Agree. OTOH, football may be trivial, but it is very very popular, and the US, of all non-footballing nations, tampering with this institution could be seen as contentious. Rightly handled.
‘But Britain has taken over the crown from Switzerland as the major financial destination which will always protect ill-gotten wealth.’
It is the Swiss investigation, and not the preceding FBI investigation, that is dealing with the seriously dodgy World Cup winning bids by Russia and Qatar respectively- at least they deserve credit for that.
The FBI investigation covers older allegations of corruption (including those connected to South Africa’a successful bid in 2010). The FBI claims jurisdiction here as US banks were used as conduits, and some of the discussions preceding the payment of alleged bribes occurred on US soil.
As FIFA is headquartered in Switzerland, and Swiss banks were allegedly used as conduits, the rationale for their subsequent investigation is clearer.
Mark Golding- the timing of both these investigations may appear suspect, given that FIFA was due to vote on a possible suspension of the Israeli FA tomorrow, however it seems more likely that, as the suspects were all conveniently gathered in Switzerland for the planned presidential election, May 27 happened to be the best day to make arrests.
If only we had our very own FBI we could be as free as America!
Let’s be clear: US prosecutions of EU financial crimes are a business strategy. Not some quest for a fair playing field.
This ever increasing focus on London as something uniquely corrupt is odd. Sure, London specialises in offshore corruption services but this is symptomatic rather than causual. Corruption is global. It is fluid and adapts. Clamp down here and it moves on. Probably long before.
London is not unique. You might even find corruption in Scotland.
All you ever wanted to know regarding the endemic Criminality of the City of London financial centre No money is dirty to them ,it can always be rendered snowy white and smelling of roses with their laundering.
http://rowans-blog.blogspot.co.uk/
According to ITV (http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-05-27/secret-fbi-bugging-operation-at-london-2012-may-have-led-to-fifa-arrests/) it was FBI bugging done with UK collaboration that led to today’s arrests. You see how transatlantic cooperation, based on the Special Relationship can be useful in fighting crime as well as terrorism!
correction: *yesterday’s* arrests.
London, like New York, has long been a stinking hole when it comes to banking.
Remember when their banks were still doing business with Hitler’s when UK and American forces were dying while fighting the Nazis.
We expect the vote to begin tomorrow 29th May then OldMark –
http://176.32.230.28/boycottisraelnetwork.net/rcir/
or we blink and shut our eyes traditionally – not my problem?!
This article mentions the Red Card European campaign against apartheid Israel. Sadly Israel’s best friend is there to protect Israeli interests.
https://truthaholics.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/fifa-vote-to-kick-israel-out-of-world-football-conveniently-blocked-by-us-intervention/
Michel Platini, the UEFA boss, has promised Israel that he will protect them from the nasty Palestinians, no matter how many Palestinian footballers the Israelis shoot, arrest or otherwise interfere with and hinder.
Why is the Israeli team more important to Platini than the Palestinian?
Why does he so want to protect the criminals against the victims.
But yeah, Russia and Israel. A twofer, eh.
“UEFA President Michel Platini has told Israeli Football Association officials that he will support Israel against any calls from the Palestinian FA to suspend them from FIFA.”
I read somewhere else that Israelis were crowing that UEFA was in the bag. It’s theirs.
I do hope someone takes a look at potential corruption and bribes at UEFA.
http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/platini-backs-israel-over-calls-to-suspend-them-from-fifa/
Mark Golding 1.21pm- I think it would, from a Palestinian POV, be preferable tactically for the vote on the suspension of the Israeli FA to be postponed, for these reasons-
1. Blatter, under whose stewardship FIFA has become a corrupt laughing stock, is on the record as opposing the move to suspend the Israeli FA- and his word still counts with some of the corrupt small fry within FIFA
2. His successor (who could possibly be the president of the Jordanian FA) may well be more sympathetic to sanctions against the Israeli FA
3. In the interim, the Israeli FA is unlikely to change its spots, and will likely continue to condone the harassment of Palestinian teams and players at the behest of the IDF
4. If a vote to suspend the Israeli FA succeeds tomorrow the press in the US will have a field day- what right does this corrupt organisation have to suspend the ‘only democracy in the middle east’ etc. etc. The army of US ‘soccer moms’ with thus have all the more reason to be sympathetic to the Israeli POV on this issue.
Geitner referred to Lagarde as “our gal” when she took over the IMF from the conveniently indisposed DSK.
I’m sure there are many of Geithner’s chums who will be thinking exactly the same about Platini.
Another article on the Israel connection: Ahead Of Israel Expulsion Vote U.S. Orders Raid On FIFA.
The raid, with obviously pre-alarmed New York Times reporters on the scene, comes shortly before a FIFA vote to expel Israel from the association……
So FIFA’s looking for a new president? I think you guys are looking for my connections and the deliverology team I will install for a modest charge in your office. I can teach you a lot about corruption.
Tony.
That angle really doesn’t wash. The people arrested are by and large opponents of the move against Israel (which sadly wouldn’t have passed anyway).
“That angle really doesn’t wash. The people arrested are by and large opponents of the move against Israel”
How do you work that out?
They were mostly South Americans.
So unless you’ve got something to back that up, probably best to ignore it, eh.
(which sadly wouldn’t have passed anyway)
And again, how do you work that out?
South American corrupt millionaires, Herbie, not Sandanistas. What planet are you on?
Craig
You claimed that:
“the people arrested are by and large opponents of the move against Israel”
How do you work that out?
And.
How do you work out that the vote was unlikely to be carried?
Simple enough.
You must know on what basis you formed your opinion.
Herbie
The Congress is going ahead. As is the vote on Israel. Which will be defeated. You really don’t know anything at all about FIFA. The “it’s an American attempt to protect Israel” meme is a pathetic Putinista effort to divert attention from Russia’s central involvement in FIFA corruption.
I’m simply asking, Craig, how you worked out that:
“the people arrested are by and large opponents of the move against Israel”
An answer please, and less of the waffling.
Herbie
It’s not the UNGA. Votes are bought. The Africans will not be solidly behind Palestine, for example.
John Goss: “I quite like Putin”
Then watch youtube documentaries detailing what Alexander Litvinenko had on him. Putin’s meteoric rise began in the 1990s in St. Petersburg. During that period Putin was dismissed from the position of authority he then held by the decision of the city council after they uncovered evidence of colossal scale embezzlement of state funds. They had to re-introduce ration cards in St Petersburg and call for humanitarian assistance from abroad, whilst the wonder boy was enriching himself.