22 Oct 2011

FIFA president announces anti-corruption plan

11:29 am on 22 October 2011

The president of football's world governing body Sepp Blatter has announced his long-awaited anti-corruption plan including a pledge to re-open the case into the collapse of FIFA's former marketing partner ISL.

Blatter, re-elected for a fourth term in June which he says will be his last, also announced the creation of a new "good governance committee", featuring figures from outside FIFA, and three taskforces.

The committee would include representatives of clubs, leagues, players, referees and women's football, among others.

One taskforce would look into changes to the FIFA statutes, a second would look at changes to the ethics committee and a third would be responsible for introducing changes to make FIFA more transparent.

These would be added to an existing taskforce aimed at making the sport itself more attractive in time for the 2014 World Cup.

All proposals were passed by the executive committee and Blatter said he wanted concrete results by the time of the FIFA Congress in June 2013.

Regarding the ISL case, he said: "This is an issue which has been raised by the national associations and members of FIFA, the executive committee of FIFA has decided that this case should be opened."

ISL went bankrupt in 2001.

BBC's Panorama programme said last November that documents relating to a criminal investigation into the ISL collapse are believed to show that senior FIFA officials were paid kickbacks in return for granting ISL lucrative World Cup television and sponsorship rights during the 1990s.