A former Fifa boss has allegedly confirmed that World Cup votes can be bought by bribing executives with money and girls.

The fixer claimed ruling champions Spain were involved in underhand techniques

Michel Zen-Ruffinen - a former Fifa general secretary - was secretly filmed by undercover journalists.

In the video, he appears to name several allegedly corrupt officials, referring to one as "the biggest gangster you will find on Earth".

The 51-year-old works as a fixer and liaises with executives to find out what they are looking for in a World Cup host nation, charging £210,000 for his services.

The Sunday Times says the reporters held several meetings with Mr Zen-Ruffinen.

One journalist posed as businessmen who wanted the USA to win the bid.

Mr Zen-Ruffinen is alleged to have said that meeting executives in a city for unofficial talks was "no problem" and claimed one committee member could be influenced with girls, saying: "He's the guy you can have with the ladies and not with money."

The 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids have been hit by a series of corruption allegations resulting in the suspension of Nigerian Fifa executive Amos Adamu who allegedly guaranteed his vote for £500,000.

In the latest recordings, it is not just the Fifa officials who are accused of underhand behaviour, but bidding host nations.

Mr Zen-Ruffinen apparently claimed 2018 joint candidates Spain and Portugal had teamed up with 2022 bidder Qatar to share supporters, securing seven votes already.

If the allegations are true, it would mean one of the main rivals to the England 2018 bid, Spain-Portugal, have already secured one-third of the votes needed.

The Fifa ethics committee has confirmed it is investigating an allegiance, but has not identified the countries involved.

Spain-Portugal has refused to comment on the claim, but Qatar has strongly denied all allegations.

In response to the Sunday Times report, Mr Zen-Ruffinen said many of his comments were simply "impressions" of the goings on inside Fifa circles and that he had "exaggerated" comments to keep the businessmen interested.

Despite claiming the Spain-Portugal and Qatar allegiance was "fact" in the recordings, Mr Zen-Ruffinen has since said he was just repeating "rumours".

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-New ... 0936?f=rss

Is football the most corrupt sport in the world or is there another challenger?

I'd say you could look at professional boxing, F1 and athletics for a start and quite a lot of sports in the far east are rather... influenced by betting syndicates. It seems to be the general case that the people doing the sport are often decent and playing to the rules, the people administering the sports are a bunch of crooks who would swindle their own gran for a fiver.

And that's not even mentioning cricket in Pakistan and India...


Jon

I saw this

Illegal online sports streaming of matches 'increases'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/11549979


Hold on this is money that is NOT going into sport rather than flowing out of sport! If the sports associations came up with sensible online streaming services of their own then they could get this money themselves. What they are more interested in is screwing the fans for every penny that they have instead.