By Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
JOHN DELANEY’S comments about the injustice that the FAI felt over Thierry Henry’s infamous handball changed dramatically immediately after his secret €5m deal with FIFA.
Just days after Mr Delaney signed the deal at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, both he and the FAI declined to comment at all when FIFA’s disciplinary committee cleared Henry of any wrongdoing.
Yet in the days and weeks prior to the deal Mr Delaney spoke frequently and passionately about how the integrity of the game of international soccer was at stake.
On November 19, 2009 – the day after Henry’s cheating helped put Ireland out of the World Cup – Mr Delaney’s sense of injustice was clear. ‘I really believe the integrity of the game has been questioned last night,’ he said.
‘We have got to do what we have to do,’ he said as he appealed for a replay.
‘We owe it to the players, who were magnificent last night. ‘It is up to the people who govern the game now.
‘Every time I go to a FIFA congress, I hear about fair play and integrity.’
Less than two months later – on January 15, 2010 – Mr Delaney signed the confidential FIFA agreement that led to €5m and $400,000 being transferred to FAI accounts.
Part of the agreement reads: ‘The FAI is now willing to irrevocably and unconditionally accept the decision of the referee as final and to waive any and all claims against FIFA.’
But no one ever told the Irish public that the FAI had now officially accepted the referee’s decision.
The deal was signed three days before FIFA’s disciplinary committee was due to hold a hearing into Thierry Henry’s actions – an inquiry the FAI had insisted on.
The FIFA hearing – held on January 18, 2010 – decided ‘that there was no legal foundation for the committee to consider the case because handling the ball cannot be regarded as a serious infringement as stipulated’.
In response, the FAI and Mr Delaney did not comment at all – as reported by several newspapers in Ireland and England.
This silence is in stark contrast to the many comments Mr Delaney and the FAI made about the ‘hurt’ they felt about the injustice of Ireland’s World Cup exit prior to the FIFA pay-out.
Two days after Henry’s disciplinary hearing – on January 20, 2010 – FIFA transferred €5m into the FAI’s National Irish Bank deposit account.
The FAI’s silence about the result of Henry’s hearing was not reflected by others who remained publicly appalled.
‘They seem to pick and choose when they punish people retrospectively,’ said former Ireland star Tony Cascarino.
‘If it had been an act of violence they would probably have been penalised but instead, he gets away with blatant cheating.’
Defender Seán St Ledger, who played in the fateful 2009 match against France, said FIFA had created a dangerous precedent by failing to punish Henry for the handball that sent France to the World Cup finals at Ireland’s expense.
‘I don’t want players to get banned, but the decision promotes, “If you can get away with it, do it”,’ he said at the time.
Responding to criticism that he sold out Irish fans, Mr Delaney told RTÉ on Friday that he was doing his best for Ireland.
‘I’ve heard a lot of talk over the last couple of days about selling the fans down,’ he said.
‘I’m an Irish fan, I love my country, I love the Irish national team. ‘I was doing my best with members of the FAI board to get us back with a sporting solution.’
Mr Delaney said the FAI could not – until now – reveal details of the deal because of a confidentiality clause which included a €250,000 penalty.
But that very secrecy will likely be examined by those investigating allegations of financial wrongdoing at FIFA.
As Mr Delaney defended his own actions, he had no problem denouncing the FIFA president as an ’embarrassment’.
He also recounted a story about an encounter he had with the outgoing executive, saying Blatter ogled his partner of three years, PR event organiser Emma English.
‘He met Emma, my partner, in Vienna recently and he stared at her for seven or eight seconds and he said, “I approve of your new girlfriend”‘.
Mr Delaney added: ‘If she was here she would tell you herself. ‘He stared at her and I said, “Move on”, and he did.’ Meanwhile, last night the FBI declined to specify if it would be including payments such as that made to the FAI in its investigations of FIFA.
‘At this time, we are not making any comments about the case,’ Kelly Langmesser from the FBI’s New York field office told the MOS.
Nathalie Guth, from the Swiss Attorney General’s office, also declined to respond to the FAI payment saying ‘the focus of the Swiss investigation is clearly defined’.
But the manner in which the FIFA pay-off was kept secret has caused widespread international concern and raised questions about the possibility of other secret payouts by FIFA.
The payment was alternatively described as ‘incredible’ by outgoing FIFA vice president Jim Boyce, as ‘quite extraordinary’ by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, as ‘intriguing’ by Tánaiste Joan Burton, as ‘a joke’ by German Football Federation president Wolfgang Niersbach, and as ‘disgraceful and unacceptable’ by Raymond Domenech, the manager of the French team on the night of Henry’s handball.
This week’s revelations about the secret payment have also highlighted the inconsistent approach adopted by Mr Delaney and been illustrated by recent calls from him and others for more transparency at FIFA.
Although the FAI has now shown how the FIFA money was ‘reflected’ in its accounts, the reality is that it was treated in a manner that shielded it from public view completely.
Such accounting practices are entirely legal but a long way from the full transparency that non-profit bodies such as the FAI continually advocate.
FIFA’s accounts also failed to show the specifics of the FAI loan, a task made simple by the tens of millions flowing through the association’s Swiss accounts.
However, FIFA did not respond to questions from the MOS about how and where the FAI loan and subsequent write-down is reflected in its accounts.
But an examination of FIFA’s published financial reports – audited by KPMG in Zurich – shows millions are frequently lent to ‘related parties’ and ‘third parties’.
For example, in 2013, $21m in short-term loans had been lent to unspecified third parties by FIFA. Correspondingly, FIFA’s accounts also show millions being written off in bad debts annually, with no reference as to why or what the circumstances may be.
In recent years the organisation has put aside between $3m and $6.7m each year to cover expected bad debts.
The higher figure is from 2013 – the year that most of the FAI’s loan was written off. But just as with the FAI accounts there is nothing in FIFA’s accounts that would lead to public disclosure of the FAI deal.
In fact in 2010 – the year that the FAI deal was agreed and paid – FIFA’s financial report declared: ‘There are no material lawsuits or other information to be disclosed.’
We now know the cost of that clean bill of health involved several million to the FAI.
But that year FIFA declared an $18m spend on legal matters as part of a $58m bill for governance expenses.
What the remainder of these legal expenses are for – and whether they might relate to confidential payments such as Ireland’s – remains unknown.
