SAN FRANCISCO, February 12, (THEWILL) – World football governing body, FIFA has banned Mr Jérôme Valcke, former Secretary General of FIFA, for 12 years from all football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) on a national and international level.
The ban, which comes into force immediately was reached at the adjudicatory chamber of the independent Ethics Committee chaired by Mr Hans Joachim Eckert.
FIFA said on its website that the investigation against Mr Valcke was conducted by Dr Cornel Borbély, chairman of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee, following allegations of potential misconduct related to the sale of tickets for FIFA World Cups.
During the course of the investigations, several other acts of potential misconduct arose, including abuse of the FIFA travel expenses policies and regulations, cases involving related-parties issues and the sale of TV and other media rights, and the destruction of evidence.
Amongst other things, the adjudicatory chamber found that a sports marketing firm had gained an undue advantage from the selling of FIFA World Cup tickets while Mr Valcke did nothing to stop these activities, but rather, encouraged the persons responsible to do so.
He was also found culpable of travelling at FIFA’s expense purely for sightseeing reasons as well as repeatedly choosing private flights for his trips over commercial flights without any business rationale for doing so thereby, acting against FIFA’s best interests and caused considerable financial damage to FIFA.
It was found that Mr Valcke attempted to grant the TV and media rights for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups, for the Caribbean, to a third party for a fee far below their actual market value and had taken concrete preparatory action in this regard.
Valcke deliberately tried to obstruct the ongoing proceedings against him by attempting to delete or deleting several files and folders relevant to the investigation, despite being aware of his duty to preserve all data and to collaborate in order to establish the facts of the case.
In summary, the conduct of Mr Valcke as Secretary General of FIFA constituted a violation of article 13 (General rules of conduct), article 15 (Loyalty), article 16 (Confidentiality), article 18 (Duty of disclosure, cooperation and reporting), article 19 (Conflicts of interest), article 20 (Offering and accepting gifts and other benefits) and article 41 (Obligation of the parties to collaborate) of the FIFA Code of Ethics (FCE).
In consequence, Mr Valcke has been banned for 12 years from all football related activities and fined CHF 100,000.
Story by David Oputah
