Corruption-fighting Canadian lawyer’s advice for FIFA

The arrest and charges against officials from world soccer’s governing body FIFA did not come as a surprise to the Canadian lawyer and anti-corruption expert who once tried to help clean up the organization.

Alexandra Wrage, president and founder of the U.S.-based anti-bribery organization TRACE International, quit FIFA’s independent governance committee two years ago in frustration.

“It was clear that FIFA was not serious about reform at the time of the IGC,” she tells Yahoo Canada News.

The group whose aim was to improve accountability and transparency at the non-profit organization following a previous suite of scandals was relegated to occasional meetings and conference calls.

“If you’re working with an organization that’s really receptive to change, you can do it that way, but for an organization that was so reluctant and foot-dragging about the process, occasional meetings was just not going to do the trick,” she says.

“So I could stay and be ineffective and have the group’s good name associated with a failed effort or depart. I chose the latter.”

It would seem FIFA’s efforts at reform did, indeed, fail.

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department announced charges against nine FIFA officials and five others from associated organizations and sports marketing companies.

The 47-count indictment includes allegations of racketeering, money-laundering, obstruction of justice, tax fraud, and wire fraud.

Though FIFA president Sepp Blatter refuted any blame and won re-election as president last Friday, he abruptly quit this week, just before the FBI confirmed that he is under investigation in their corruption probe.

Blatter’s resignation came as more of a surprise, she says. He’s an incredibly strong leader whom some adore and some are intimated by; others have simply benefited from the way he’s wielded the organization’s largesse.

The organization has an incredible opportunity now to turn around its reputation, she says, but it is by no means a sure thing.

“There’s a really entrenched system of patronage so the new leadership, if they’re drawn from that same group and beholden to that same group, might well just be more of the same.”

A few years ago, the organization officially changed its bylaws to limit leadership candidates to those who have worked within world soccer for two of the last three years.

FIFA would benefit from reversing that rule and bringing in a strong, credible candidate from outside the soccer world, she says.

“You don’t need to know football to run a multibillion-dollar organization. What you need to know is governance and accountability and management,” Wrage says.

It’s time to open the books and bring transparency to what is, ultimately, a non-profit organization, she adds. They should disclose financials and salaries and demand accountability for how money is spent.

Ideally, though unlikely, the organization should also review the World Cup events awarded to Russia and Qatar, she says. Both are “tainted” by questions about how they could possibly have won the rights to host the event.

“There’s so much we don’t know about what goes on at FIFA. I was given the opportunity to ask questions and I couldn’t get my questions answered,” Wrage says.

Blatter, who will remain in place until a successor is chosen in December or as late as next March, should step aside quickly, Wrage suggests.

Despite the many scandals, it’s not too late for the organization to rebuild its reputation, she says.

“There’s only one direction for them to go and that’s up,” Wrage says. “I don’t think any organization is ever truly hopeless but FIFA has a lot of work to do.”