Alleged Fifa corruption under renewed attack

Allegations of corruption in football’s Zurich-based world governing body, Fifa, are not being dealt with effectively, a top German lawyer says.

Guenter Hirsch, former president of Germany’s highest appeals court, has stepped down from Fifa’s ethics commission. He said in his resignation letter that Fifa showed “no real interest” in trying to clean itself up, the German news agency reported on Sunday.

In November Fifa suspended and fined two executive committee members who were filmed by British undercover journalists offering to sell their votes in the World Cup bidding process.

Hirsch’s resignation came as British Prime Minister David Cameron claimed on the BBC that he had been “misled” by Fifa officials ahead of the vote. Cameron went to Zurich to lobby for England, along with Prince William and former England captain David Beckham.

“I definitely had a number of those Fifa executives who looked me in the eye and shook my hand and said ‘don’t worry, we’re with you’,” he said. “I’m afraid that the world of football governance is rather murky in that way.”

However, Fifa president Sepp Blatter has consistently defended the organisation.

“There is no systematic corruption at Fifa. That’s nonsense,” he told the Weltwoche weekly in December after the World Cup had been awarded to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.

Blatter is standing for re-election for a fourth four-year term in June.