FIFA can only operate this way as long as the country organizations tolerate it, it’s interesting how something like sports that is commonly considered as representing a country is so massively corrupt and everybody is ok with it (and I’m thinking of the big sponsors, where you probably have massive background checks to get hired, but it’s alright to invest in such organizations)
I'm a big proponent of government and a healthy mix of public and private enterprise. My point is mostly that I'm worried more about safeguards against a corrupt referee than a corrupt star player, to use a sports analogy.
FIFA has been corrupt for decades. Although supposedly its been cleaned up since Blatter was removed, it is doubtful the institutional corruption has been eliminated completely. The only question is how pervasive it is.
Also, a lot of those famously corrupt big bodies like the IOC and FIFA are international organsations. It's not easy to get a majority of the national member organisations, or their governments, to support strong action against corruption.
I think you need accountability and regular rotation of leadership.
There must be some reason that global sports organizations so often attract corruption. I'm thinking of UEFA, FIFA and many of the other less well known sports associations - FIDE for chess etc, and many more. They usually don't have a democratic governance structure and let interests of the involved people entrench themselves.
Also would have been interesting to hear more about these IOC positions, how are the people selected for these roles and how often do they change? I bet the answer is nepotism. FIFA is another rotten nest.
What is it with international supervisory bodies and blatant corruption (or maybe incredible incompetence)? This has real parallels to the International Olympic Committee and FIFA. I guess the parallels for all of them are a monopolistic position (and in many cases an essentially government granted one) with basically no oversight. Those conditions just seem to breed corruption.
It seems pretty obvious that a totalitarian petrostate, that bribed its way into using a global sports event as a massive PR push, doesn't care. What matters is whether we care that they don't care. What matters is whether we care that our sports institutions are massively corrupt.
Because the international olympic committee is quite possibly the most corrupt sporting organization on the planet, which is saying something when FIFA exists.
Okay, I'll ask it: why does it take the U.S. to get involved in fighting corruption against an almost entirely non-U.S. organization that governs a sport that's not very popular here? Why isn't this happening in Europe or Central/South America where the impact is more immediate?
For the most part, it's because they were cheating the government and skimming funds for illegal businesses and laundering money and not paying taxes on it, not cheating the players (sorta kinda....again summarizing a lot.)
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