DPA/Berlin
FIFA presidential contender Chung Mong Joon called yesterday for an emergency task force to run FIFA, saying football’s world governing body is in “total meltdown.”
The South Korean former FIFA vice-president said the task force “will enable FIFA secretariat to function without interruption” during its leadership crisis.
It follows a Swiss criminal investigation into FIFA president Joseph Blatter announced Friday. Swiss prosecutors also questioned UEFA president Michel Platini as a witness into a payment of 2 million Swiss francs he received from Blatter in 2011.
Former Brazil international Zico, who is a potential candidate to succeed Blatter, meanwhile called for “immediate clarification” from FIFA’s ethics committee on Blatter and Platini.
Chung described Friday as “another sad day for FIFA” which has been rocked by a number of corruption scandals and the arrests and indictments of senior football officials in a US probe.
Chung said while as a FIFA executive committee member “I worked ceaselessly to confront and to correct what I thought were opaque and illegal ways in which Mr Blatter and his predecessor, Mr Havelange, ran FIFA.”
He added: “I am sad to say that, at the time, I did not have the power to stop such corrupt practices that have now come back to haunt and destroy FIFA.”
FIFA is “facing an unprecedented crisis” and with its secretary general, Jerome Valcke, suspended, and Blatter facing a criminal investigation “is in a total meltdown,” Chung said.
Chung, a businessman and member of the family that founded Hyundai, is standing against Platini and Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan for the FIFA presidency when Blatter is due to stand down at an extraordinary congress in Zurich on February 26.
If elected he said he would serve a single four-year term and use the first two years “to undertake a complete structural and operational reform of FIFA” and devote the remaining two years to bringing “unity and harmony” to the organisation.
“Forty years of culture of corruption can be eradicated in four years,” he said.
Zico, 62, said in an open letter to the ethics committee on his Facebook page that the committee cannot fail to act following the criminal investigation into Blatter.
Zico said the committee had in the past taken steps against members of FIFA’s executive committee, including Jack Warner and Mohammed bin Hammam, without previous action by prosecuting authorities. Both were suspended in 2011 after bribery allegations.
Zico said the ethics committee “must act with great transparency” and “disclose all its procedures” so that reforms and the FIFA presidential election in February are “not contaminated by suspicions of corruption.”
Swiss prosecuting authorities on Friday opened a criminal investigation against Blatter and questioned him “on suspicion of criminal mismanagement and - alternatively - misappropriation.”
Platini wrote Monday to FIFA’s ethics committee seeking to clear up any questions surrounding the payment made to him in February 2011.
Former France international Platini is one of the three official candidates along with Prince Ali and Chung so far bidding to succeed Blatter at an extraordinary FIFA congress in Zurich on February 26.
Zico is also seeking to enter the race for the presidency but has yet to gather enough nominations to become an official candidate.
File picture of Former FIFA vice president Chung Mong-joon.
