Wrage calls time on Fifa fight against corruption

A LEADING Fifa anti-corruption adviser resigned last night, claiming football’s governing body failed to change its culture after bribery and vote-buying scandals.

Alexandra Wrage, the president of international compliance expert TRACE, left an advisory panel chaired by Swiss law professor Mark Pieth which was asked to guide Fifa President Sepp Blatter’s promised modernising reforms.

“(Fifa) remains the closed society that fuelled its problems to begin with,” the United States-based not-for-profit group said in a statement.

Wrage leaves Pieth’s team after it pledged to increase its Fifa work when it met in Switzerland last week for a final scheduled session to decide strategy ahead of a Fifa congress on 31 May in Mauritius. Pieth said they will monitor Fifa 
beyond the congress.

“(The panel) discussed all options and unanimously arrived at the conclusion that Fifa continues to need a compliance watchdog after the Congress of 2013,” Pieth said in a statement.

Blatter has suggested Pieth’s mandate should end at the congress. “Since this means an intensive workload for the (panel) for the year 2013-14, Ms Wrage has decided to leave the group,” wrote Pieth, a former United Nations investigator.

In Mauritius, Fifa member countries will be asked to approve a slate of reforms agreed to by Blatter and his executive committee last month.

Wrage has previously spoken out in frustration about the Fifa board’s rejection of some modernising proposals, 
including women candidates for high-profile appointments and greater transparency about salaries and bonuses paid to Blatter and other senior officials. “The (advisory panel) made recommendations that ultimately amounted to nothing more than common sense textbook corporate governance and best practices in compliance, but even those were never considered by Fifa,” Wrage’s group said in its statement on her behalf.

Fifa declined to comment on Wrage’s resignation.

Meanwhile, former Fifa officials Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer face possible legal action from football’s ruling body and probes from the FBI and Internal Revenue Service after a report found they had committed serious acts of fraud.

CONCACAF made public on Friday an Integrity Committee report which highlighted the misuse of millions of dollars from the late 1990s.

On Sunday, Warner, the former CONCACAF president, resigned from his post as minister of national security in the government of Trinidad & Tobago. He followed that up yesterday by resigning as chairman of the United National Congress party.