Tag Archives: World Cup

Allegations of Corruption and the Qatari World Cup

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Just five days after FIFA voted to award Qatar the 2022 World Cup, Jack Warner, a senior FIFA official (and now a politician in Trinidad), received $1.2 million from a company controlled by the leading proponent for a Qatari World Cup (the proponent, Mohamed bin Hammam, has since been banned from football for life ). Some have argued that this impropriety should cost Qatar the World Cup, and FIFA has created and empowered an ethics committee to investigate potential wrongdoing. The United States FBI is also investigating the payments. If FIFA finds wrongdoing, it might reassign the cup on that basis.

I believe that to reassign the Cup on the basis of corruption in the FIFA vote would be a mistake. The Qatari World Cup is a magnifying glass on unfair labor practices in Qatar, and the Cup’s potential impact on human and labor rights is too great to give up.

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Brazilian Anticorruption and the World Cup

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The FIFA World Cup is more than “a mere sporting event. It’s a tool to promote social transformation.”  So said Ricardo Teixeira, the President of the Brazilian Football Confederation, after Brazil won the bid to host the 2014 games. Despite initial optimism, however, the buildup to the Cup in Brazil has been marred by widespread protests and accusations of corruption. If there is a basis to these accusations, the World Cup provides an early — and high-profile — opportunity to test Brazil’s new anticorruption law. Maryum’s post earlier this week might be right that the national government has a political incentive to prove that it’s serious about anticorruption, but the World Cup contradicts that narrative. The Cup’s high profile might skew the national government’s incentives: identifying corruption in Brazil’s World Cup could be a national embarrassment.  If the federal government’s incentives are misaligned, the decentralized enforcement powers in the CCA – which Maryum’s post criticizes – offer hope that corruption will be punished. Continue reading →