On June 3rd, 2015, and at the request of the FBI, the international police organisation Interpol issued its well-known red or 'wanted' notices in relation to key figures in football's world governing body FIFA. These figures included Jack Warner from Trinidad and Uruguay's Nicolas Leoz, both accused of racketeering, conspiracy and corruption. A few days earlier FIFA's headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, had been searched in a dawn raid and seven FIFA executives had been arrested in their luxury hotel. It was the start of the the so-called 'FIFAgate' affair that made front pages all around the world.
However, that was not Interpol's only involvement in this saga. For a few days after issuing those red 'wanted' notices the police organisation, under pressure from the media, announced that it was suspending all its own financial links with FIFA. For it had emerged that Interpol had signed a deal in 2011 with FIFA to receive 20 million euros over ten years – ironically, to help promote integrity in sport. In fact, Interpol found itself in a situation where it had to issue red notices against several officials and ex-officials from FIFA “with whom we'd had a partnership agreement”, says Australian Tim Morris, executive director of Interpol, speaking in the documentary 'Interpol, une police sous influence?' ('Interpol, a police under the influence?') broadcast on the Arte television channel in France on March 20th, 2018 (see below)
The FIFA scandal could not have fallen at a worse time for Interpol's new general secretary, the German Jürgen Stock, who had been elected to the post at the end of June 2014. Having decided in 2015 not to renew the organisation's deal with tobacco firm Philip Morris International, in a move to preserve Interpol's image, he now also had to let go one of its biggest private partners. This was a financial blow for the organisation, which that year chalked up a structural deficit of several million euros.
To replace its FIFA partnership Interpol decided to do a deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for 1.5 million euros over three years, from 2015 to 2018. The police agency says that this deal, which is still in effect, is aimed at “reinforcing security and integrity in sport”, in particular tackling areas such as doping, match-fixing, illegal betting and corruption.
Several joint projects have been run between the organizations since the deal was signed. For example, in June 2016, ahead of the Rio Olympics, a team of experts from Interpol and the IOC provided training for a group of Brazilian judges, prosecutors and police officers on how to stop crime in sport. In 2017 the two organisations also arranged conferences on integrity in sport in the Bahamas and West Africa.
Yet when it comes to corruption the IOC has a track record almost as poor as FIFA's. By the time the former Franco supporter Juan Antonio Samaranch had finished his long period at the helm of the IOC (1980 – 2001) around ten members of the committee had been expelled for having taken bribes from Salt Lake City in relation to its bid to stage the 2002 Winter Olympics. The IOC subsequently carried out reforms but they were not of a comprehensive nature.
Indeed, among the hundred or so members of the IOC still in post, sa few since 1978, are some figures whose behaviour has raised question marks over the years. For example there is the Emir of Qatar, Tamim al-Thani; the circumstances surrounding the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to his country are now the object of legal investigations in several countries. There is also Issa Hayatou from Cameroon, a FIFA honorary vice-president, who was accused by whistle-blower Phaedra Almajid of having accepted a bribe from Qatar in relation to the 2022 World Cup bid. Another example is the influential Kuwaiti Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, suspected of corruption by the American justice system. All three strongly deny any wrongdoing.
In December 2015, meanwhile, France's financial prosecutions unit the PNF opened a preliminary investigation over suspicions of corruption in the awarding of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. From Brazil to Senegal via the Seychelles, the French and Brazilian justice systems are looking at an alleged international system of bribes aimed at trying to buy IOC members.
In November 2017 the IOC member and former Namibian sprinter Frankie Fredericks was placed under formal investigation by the PNF for receiving bribes and laundering the proceeds of corruption. According to Le Monde the ex-athlete – since suspended by the IOC – received a transfer of nearly 300,000 dollars on the very day that Rio was designated as the 2016 Olympic hosts. The money was allegedly sent by Papa Massata Diack, son of the former Senegalese president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Lamine Diack, who is now at the centre of the Russian sports doping scandal.
According to accounts obtained by the German public broadcaster ARD, the IOC played a passive and accommodating role during the doping affair. The Guardian newspaper meanwhile spoke to Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogan, director and producer respectively of the Oscar-winning documentary on the Russian doping scandal, 'Icarus', who talked of “backroom deals” between the IOC and Russia.
Contacted by Mediapart, an Interpol spokesperson said that “cooperation between Interpol and the IOC has allowed the police and specialist officers to develop invaluable expertise to fight against the manipulation of competitions”. The spokesperson said the IOC's financial contribution complied with Interpol's “due diligence” rules.
French delegation 'very wary'
How did the International Criminal Police Organization, better known as Interpol, find itself involved in a number of different private partnerships in this way? For some years the agency had suffered from chronic under-funding, with its 192 member countries not contributing enough. In 2017 the statutory annual contributions barely reached 55 million euros against a consolidated budget of 127 million euros.
Back in 2011 the ambitious Interpol general secretary of that time, the American Ronald K. Noble, dreamt of attaining a budget of a billion dollars and decided to approach private institutions and multinationals. After FIFA, which provided 20 million euros over ten years, the biggest donation in its history, Interpol signed a deal in 2012 with Philip Morris International for 15 million euros over three years to fight against counterfeiting, and then in 2013 an agreement worth 4.5 million euros over three years with the pharmaceutical industry to fight against counterfeit medicines, as revealed by Mediapart.
But among senior police officers and inside Interpol itself there was concern about these private sector deals. “In the French delegation we were very wary about all these partnerships with the private sector,” says Mireille Ballestrazzi, now director of the French police's serious crimes force the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire (DCPJ) but at the time (2012-2016) president of Interpol's executive committee during Noble's final years in charge.
“Even if you lack resources that doesn't excuse just doing nonsense and for me an association with FIFA was nonsense,” says Raymond Kendall, the British secretary-general of Interpol from 1985 to 2000 and Noble's predecessor.
The anger among senior ranks of police officers has been rising since 2011, with European officers rebelling, united by concerns over ethical and moral values. Senior officers who are normally reluctant to question their organisation sent an explosive letter to Ronald Noble and Interpol's president at the time, Khoo Boon Hui from Singapore. “A bombshell, something quite extraordinary,” is how one senior European officer, who asked to stay anonymous, described it.
Published here in full, this letter calls into question Interpol's “integrity” and was signed by senior officers from Holland, Germany, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Austria, Belgium and Finland. It reads: “To begin with, let me remind you that, in general, police authorities in Europe are prohibited from accepting donations from citizens and trade and industry. This is to safeguard their independence, neutrality and integrity.”
The European officers, writing three years before the FIFA corruption scandal, were already worried about the consequences of a partnership with football's governing body. “Interpol's co-operation with FIFA is regarded with scepticism in many European countries due to numerous allegations of corruption that have been made against FIFA officials.”
This letter may not have ended the FIFA deal but it certainly had an effect. After Interpol's general assembly in Rome in November 2012 Ronald Noble was obliged to set up a working group to examine donations from the private sector. The words “integrity” and “reputation” became common currency inside the agency.
Noble handed the leadership of this group to the vice-president of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office the BKA. This discreet man was then still largely unknown in the ranks of Interpol yet by the end of 2014 he was elected as its head. His name was Jürgen Stock.
Under the helm of its new German secretary-general Interpol adopted stricter rules governing donations. It even nominated a special independent agent, a “due diligence” officer, to supervise the ethics of private partnerships.
After the FIFA deal was suspended in 2015 the funding deals with the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries were not renewed. But Mediapart understands that this left Interpol with a deficit of several million euros. A pragmatist by nature, Jürgen Stock turned to the United Arab Emirates - via its foundation - and Qatar for partnership deals.
In 2012 the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee organising the 2022 football World Cup offered ten million dollars to fund an Interpol programme called 'Stadia', which concerns security at sports stadia around the world. This ten-year partnership, signed by Ronald Noble for Interpol, runs until 2022.
That deal is still in operation yet the award of the 2022 World Cup finals to Qatar is today the object of legal investigations in several countries. In March 2015 the Swiss judicial authorities began a criminal investigation against a person or persons unknown over suspicions of “money laundering and misuse of corporate assets” over the circumstances in which the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar were awarded.
In the United States the FBI has opened its own independent investigation, while in France the national financial crimes prosecutor the Parquet National Financier (PNF) opened an investigation in 2016 over “private corruption”, “criminal conspiracy” and “influence peddling” in relation to the award of the tournament.
Yet the new rules brought in at Interpol under secretary general Jürgen Stock stipulate that the “Secretary General shall ensure the systematic and documented verification of the integrity of donors and potential donors and their reputation in financial and legal matters”. The Qatar 2022 committee itself is a state body presided over by Mohammed bin Hamad al-Thani, brother of the Emir Tamim al-Thani. Had the due diligence officer gone over the deal in detail? “It's important to underline that I analyse money from the private sector. If it comes from Qatar, it's public,” the due diligence officer Kris D'hoore told Mediapart. “I don't carry out due diligence on member states or governments.”
'Gamekeeper turned poacher'
Chris Eaton is a key figure at the heart of the partnerships between Interpol, FIFA and Qatar. This senior Australian police officer spent eleven years between 1999 and 2010 inside Interpol, and in particular he was in charge of the Command and Coordination Centre (CCC), the organisation's operations centre. “A real cowboy, but very smart with a great strategic view,” is the verdict of one employee still at Interpol.
In January 2011 Eaton – who had already joined FIFA in early 2010 - was named head of security at football's governing body and among other things his tasks included dealing with match-fixing in football. At the age of 58, and a few years away from retirement, the move from the public into the private sector was rewarding for the Australian. According to documents seen by Mediapart, his FIFA salary was more than adequate at 26,350 Swiss francs or roughly or 22,420 euros a month. He was also give relative freedom in creating his own team and took with him two investigators from Interpol's headquarters in Lyon in central-eastern France.
But Chris Eaton did not lose touch with his former colleagues and remained in contact with Ronald Noble, with whom he got on well. He was thus one of the main architects of the deal signed between FIFA and Interpol on March 9th, 2011, to fight against match fixing. It was an important public-private partnership, Chris Eaton told Mediapart, adding he believed it was the “first partnership” between Interpol and a private organization.
The signing of the partnership took place three weeks before FIFA's 61st congress. It came just at the right moment for Sepp Blatter, who was seeking a fourth term as president of FIFA. But a storm was breaking in relation to several senior FIFA executives who were suspected of corruption, in particular over the award of the World Cup finals to Qatar in 2022.
“At the time it surprised the whole world. I myself thought: Interpol?” recalls Sylvia Schenk, a lawyer at the anti-corruption NGO Transparency. “Until then I hadn't really ever been interested in Interpol, and it came just at the time when [FIFA] president Blatter and FIFA were being attacked from all sides.” Damian Collins, a British Conservative Member of Parliament who chairs the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said: “The timing is interesting. At the time Sepp Blatter understood that he had to give the impression that FIFA was taking things in hand.” In particular this involved the creation of different internal committees charged with scrutinizing the accusations of misappropriation, said the British MP.
Thomas Kistner, a journalist on the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and a specialist on FIFA, notes: “For sure, for [Blatter] to be able to show himself in public with the secretary-general of Interpol at that time, it was a gift from heaven.”
Thanks to Chris Eaton's intervention, a partnership worth 20 million euros over ten years was signed between FIFA and Interpol. This senior Australian police officer still retained a special connection with the police agency where he spent ten years. Indeed, it was as a guest at Interpol's general assembly in Qatar in November 2010 – just a month before the country was awarded the 2022 World Cup – that Eaton, now working for FIFA, was first discreetly tapped up by another future employer – the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS). This not-for-profit think tank brings together experts and is largely funded by Qatar.
In fact, as the British journalists Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert revealed in the book The Ugly Game: The Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup, and according to documents seen by Mediapart, Chris Eaton had at the time been investigating Qatar on behalf of FIFA. This followed the claims of corruption and vote swapping over the award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Though it has passed almost unnoticed, this is an astonishing revelation: in the space of a few months the former Interpol official who on behalf of FIFA was investigating corruption claims against Qatar was then hired by Qatar itself. In January 2012 he was named as the new director of integrity in sport at the ICSS. “Chris Eaton might look as we'd say in England like a gamekeeper turned poacher for having switched sides,” says British MP Damian Collins. “To be working to investigate someone and then going to work for the people you were investigating, that raises a lot of questions.”
Chris Easton was quickly joined in his new Qatar-based venture by other former Interpol agents. Austrian Werner Schuller, a former assistant director at the police agency, joined in October 2013. Then in November 2015 Eaton hired the former director of police training and development at Interpol, the Canadian Dale Sheehan, who had been regarded as a senior figure at the agency.
The ICSS also had two major police figures as members of its advisory board: Khoo Boon Hui, who had been Interpol's president from 2008 to 2012, and Lord Stevens, who had been head of the Metropolitan Police in London and who for three years had been chair of an Interpol working group on coordinating crisis response. As for Chris Eaton he has since left the ICSS and is now an independent consultant.
One of Eaton's clients is the ICSS-backed programme on integrity in sport at the Panthéon-Sorbonne university in Paris. Meanwhile at the ICSS itself Eaton's legacy remains; in May 2017 the Qatar-based organisation announced the creation of a special investigations unit made up of former Interpol officials, including Dale Sheehan. This is a useful badge of integrity for the Qatar to have as it organises one of the most controversial World Cups in the history of the competition.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter