Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke pulled into US probe over bribes for World Cup bidding votes

Fifa says the three payments totalling $10m mentioned in a US federal indictment were approved in 2007 by Julio Grondona, the former chairman of the finance committee who died last year.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter, right, talks with Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke during a news conference in 2014. EPA/MOHAMED MESSARA

Amid a deepening corruption crisis within football’s governing body, Fifa defended its second-in-command on Tuesday by distancing him from claims he helped authorise US$10 million (Dh36.7m) in bribes for World Cup bidding votes.

Fifa says the three payments totalling $10m mentioned in a US federal indictment, which are at the heart of a Department of Justice probe, were approved in 2007 by Julio Grondona, the former chairman of the finance committee who died last year.

The Fifa statement follows a Read more:

American investigators say Warner’s long-time Fifa colleague, Chuck Blazer, believed the money was paid as bribes in exchange for their votes to give the 2010 World Cup to South Africa.

The World Cup bidding angle is a direct route into Fifa for the Department of Justice, which laid out a racketeering case mostly involving marketing rights for tournaments in North and South America across two decades.

That led to seven officials being arrested last week – including two Fifa vice presidents, one newly elected Fifa executive committee member and a Fifa staffer. They were among 14 people named in a racketeering indictment accusing football officials of accepting more than $150 million in bribes. Four more people, including Blazer and two of Warner’s sons, had their guilty pleas unsealed.

The South African allegation threatens to tarnish a 2010 World Cup that Fifa president Sepp Blatter has claimed as a defining achievement of his 17-year reign.

Fifa yesterday described the payment as part of the South African government’s “project to support the African diaspora in Caribbean countries as part of the World Cup legacy”.

Fifa said neither Valcke “nor any other member of Fifa’s senior management were involved in the initiation, approval and implementation” of the project.

It said the payments were authorised by Grondona “in accordance with the organisation regulations of Fifa”.

Grondona served as a member of Fifa’s executive committee for 26 years. The Argentine was the senior Fifa vice president, effectively second only to Blatter, when he died last year at age 82.

Blatter, who won re-election on Friday for a fifth term despite the scandal, denied being the unidentified high-ranking official named in the indictment as having “caused” the payment.

“Definitely that is not me,” Blatter said.

Former South African president Thabo Mbeki has denied his government paid bribes to secure the World Cup.

Danny Jordaan, the bid chief for the 2010 tournament, told a South African newspaper that the money was sent to Warner’s regional confederation to help with football development in the Caribbean.

In a further development yesterday, Brazilian federal police requested that prosecutors charge the former president of the Brazilian football confederation with corruption crimes related to $147 million in “atypical” bank transfers as he led preparations for the 2014 World Cup.

Local magazine Epoca was the first to report on the inquiry, saying it had obtained the two-year police investigation into Ricardo Teixeira, which was concluded and delivered to prosecutors in January but not made public.

Under Brazilian law, only prosecutors can file criminal charges and they then must be accepted by a judge. That has not yet happened to Teixeira.

According to the report in the magazine, police have made a request to prosecutors that Teixeira be charged with money laundering, tax evasion, forgery and falsification of public documents related to bank transfers made between 2009 and 2012, in the run-up to last year’s World Cup in Brazil.

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