FIFA suffer £215m loss

FIFA have lost £215 million over the last four years and are facing financial disaster, it was claimed today.

Scotland’s FIFA vice-president David Will made the revelation about the losses in a letter to all national associations today, 24 hours before an extraordinary congress of football’s world governing body.

The findings have caused several senior FIFA members to issue warnings of a looming financial catastrophe. Lennart Johansson, UEFA president and a FIFA vice-president, said: “FIFA is in crisis both financially and organisationally.

“The whole integrity and credibility is in bad shape and they need to be restored. The finances are in a mess and FIFA’s president has taken FIFA to the brink of disaster.”

Will was appointed the head of an investigation team to look into FIFA’s finances only for the audit committee to be suspended by president Sepp Blatter. The Swiss lawyer is standing for re-election against Cameroon’s Issa Hayatou on Wednesday, and his opponents claim the suspension was an attempt to gag the investigators.

In his letter, Will says FIFA borrowed 313 million secured against income expected from the 2002 and 2006 World Cups and then used the money to claim they were in profit.

He wrote: “Actually, we made a loss in of 572 million Swiss Francs (235 million) from 1999 to 2001 and for 1999/2002 the true net loss for the four years is 470 million Swiss francs (215 million). You should understand that a company in Switzerland which finds itself with such negative equity, i.e when liabilities exceed the assets, is legally bound to go to court and declare itself insolvent.

“Also, given that the income for this next period is partly used already it becomes possible that the scale of financial support to the national associations could well be in jeopardy.”