reuters
Zurich, June 2: Sepp Blatter resigned as FIFA president Tuesday in the face of a US-led corruption investigation that has plunged world soccer’s governing body into the worst crisis in its history.
Blatter, 79, announced the decision at a news conference here, six days after the FBI raided a hotel here and arrested several FIFA officials and just four days after he was
re-elected to a fifth term as president.
Blatter said an election to choose a new FIFA president would be
constructed as soon as possible. “FIFA needs profound restructuring,” he said. “The time has come to clean things up.”
FIFA, ruled over by Blatter since 1998, was rocked this week by the
announcement of an US investigation into alleged widespread financial wrongdoing stretching back for years. Swiss authorities mounted their own criminal probe into the award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively.
Blatter initially attempted to bat away the furore, relying on his network of friends to hold onto power at FIFA, which he joined in 1975.
While Blatter was not mentioned in either the US or Swiss investigations, there were widespread calls for him to quit, mostly from Western nations. Some major sponsors also expressed misgivings about the impact of the scandal.
The investigation however closed in on Blatter Tuesday, when FIFA was forced to deny that his right-hand man, secretary-general, Jerome Valcke, was implicated in a $10 million payment that lies at the heart of the US case.
Valcke, who has been secretary-general since 2007 and is seen as one of the most powerful men in world sport, had no role in the payments, which were authorised by the chairman of FIFA’s finance committee, FIFA said in an earlier statement. The chairman of the committee at the time of the
payments was Argentina’s Julio Grondona, who died last year.
A person familiar with the matter said Monday that US prosecutors believe Valcke made the $10 million bank transactions which are central to a US bribery investigation.With his
closest aide being investigated, Blatter had no option but to resign.
