Fifa vows to release details on ISL case

The Swiss-based International Football Federation (Fifa) says he will release documents that could name senior officials who took bribes in a ten-year old financial scandal.

President Sepp Blatter said that Fifa’s executive committee will examine the documents at a meeting in Tokyo in December.

At news conference in Zurich on Friday, he added an independent body would decide how the case will proceed.

The federation had been trying to stop a Swiss court from releasing documents confirming which officials took payments from the former ISL marketing agency, which collapsed in 2001.

At a court hearing in 2008, it emerged that ISL paid kickbacks of up to SFr138 million ($156.3 million) to Fifa, the International Olympic Committee and other sport organisations in return for lucrative marketing licences.

Three former executive committee members, Brazil’s Ricardo Texeira, Nicolás Leoz of Paraguay as well Issa Hayatou of Cameroon, are widely believed to be involved in the scandal. But they deny the allegations.

Blatter announced the ISL files would be opened as he detailed an overhaul of Fifa’s ethics bodies in the wake of the organisation’s worst corruption scandal. However he says Fifa as an institution is “not corrupt”.