It is a troubled football president who meets NTB for an interview two weeks before the Fifa Congress in Bangkok on 17 May. She sees a tendency from the International Football Association’s management that she does not like.
– I think that there are a number of things in Fifa now that indicate that they are reversing the anti-corruption, transparency and human rights reforms that were introduced, says Klaveness.
She is referring to the extensive reforms that were introduced in 2016 after the corruption scandal that led to Sepp Blatter having to step down as president.
At that time, the number of committees in Fifa was reduced from 26 to nine following recommendations from a committee led by Francois Carrard, which also included then Uefa general secretary and current Fifa president Gianni Infantino.
It was also decided, among other things, that no more than one football World Cup should be awarded at a time to avoid the risk of bartering and corruption.
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On the way to a new Blatter regime?
Later, the number of committees in Fifa has been reduced to seven, but at the association’s 74th congress in the Thai capital, an increase to 35 committees will be adopted, allegedly to “reflect the increasing breadth and depth of Fifa’s activities in recent years, so that the member associations can be directly involved in the democratic decision-making processes’.
This means that Fifa can assign several hundred paid committee seats to the same football people who will vote on the new rules at the congress. A similar system flourished under Blatter’s leadership.
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Fifa’s plan is also for Infantino to be able to create additional expert panels and appoint roles there. Klaveness does not want to speculate that the moves are being made because the Swiss football top wants to secure even more power.
– I don’t think you should speculate on that, because it would be counterproductive. And being Fifa president is a very demanding job. You will work globally, and you need committees and anchoring. You can’t have everyone on your board, she says, before adding at the same time:
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– But if you pulverize responsibility too much, it becomes an unclear power structure, and then it often ends up only being centered around the president. Especially if those who sit there are well paid in relation to their country’s context, it can be seen as a prize to sit there instead of a task.
– Rigging
Klaveness has more on his mind about the proposals before Congress.
– It doesn’t just apply to committees, it applies to other things as well. So in front of our eyes now there is quite clearly a reversal of the reforms that were introduced for very good reasons. It’s disturbing, and there’s not a huge amount of preparedness for it either. It does not create the major political counterforces. And then we change quite quickly without adapting things like freedom of expression and the values we care about. I think everyone should be allowed to take part, but there are some values that should be very guiding that quickly disappear, fears the football president.
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Not least, she is concerned with point 9 in Fifa’s overview of the most relevant proposals for changes to the association’s statutes – that which concerns the awarding of more than one World Cup at the same congress.
In 2010, Russia and Qatar were controversially chosen as World Cup hosts at the same congress, and following this, Fifa changed its regulations. Here too, Infantino and his government are in the process of reversing the reform.
– There are a number of things that indicate that they have merged Saudi Arabia (2034 World Cup) and Morocco, Portugal and Spain (2030 World Cup) and in a way moved the power out of the congress hall, says Klaveness.
– They moved away from this after Qatar and Russia. Back then you got a horse trade where you said “if you take that year, you get that year”. Then it will be rigging, then. And the path from rigging to corruption is quite short. I am not saying that it has happened, but I am worried about it, she continues.
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Controversial sponsorship deal
Fifa has already announced that Saudi Arabia is the only applicant for the championship in ten years’ time, and thus only formalities remain before the Gulf state becomes the World Cup host.
At the same time, Fifa has recently entered into a major cooperation agreement with the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco, which caused Amnesty International, among others, to react strongly.
Klaveness lacks transparency about the decisions that have been made.
– There is a sequence of these decisions that… It appears that one (Saudi Arabia) has worked a lot to get this position, and then Saudi Aramco comes into play. It is not certain that this happened because they had promised them money and so on, but because it is so little open, and because it has been moved away from Congress, we cannot know.
Fifa has previously defended the agreement with Saudi Aramco to NTB.
– In line with the statutes, Fifa reinvests its income, including the income from the Aramco sponsorship, in developing football around the world. It is expected that in 2023-2026 Fifa will invest in excess of 3.9 billion dollars in development and education, stated a Fifa spokesperson at the end of April.
