MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) – The specter of fresh corruption scandals hangs over the annual gathering of world soccer leaders, two years after the FIFA Congress was shaken by the exposure of far-reaching fraud.
The election of Asian members to FIFA’s ruling council on Monday kickstarts a week of meetings in Bahrain, with powerbroker Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah off the ballot after his alleged bribery was disclosed by American authorities.
The Kuwaiti sheikh’s resignation from all soccer roles – while remaining in his Olympic posts – leaves three men competing for three spots from the Asian Football Confederation on the FIFA Council, known as the executive committee until it was rebranded last year.
The only contested AFC election is for the one protected FIFA seat for Asian women. Of the four contenders, one has previous FIFA experience: Moya Dodd, who was on the executive committee at the time colleagues were arrested in the May 2015 raids in Zurich. The Sheikh Ahmad allegations demonstrated that the U.S. Department of Justice investigations into soccer corruption are ongoing even as FIFA officials swept up in 2015 prepare for sentencing hearings or trial in New York.
“No one takes any pleasure in seeing either individuals or the game suffer,” Dodd told The Associated Press on Sunday in the Bahraini capital Manama. “But I think that we have to accept that it’s a work in progress to bring football to the level of integrity that we want it to be, and while we continue to have these controversies, our reputation will suffer. The view of football from the fans, the stakeholders, the sponsors etc. will also suffer.”