FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke speaks to the media during a news conference on June 10. Valcke, FIFA’s secretary-general and its
second-highest ranking official, sought to profit personally through the
sale of a cache of World Cup tickets he controlled in 2014, emails
disclosed Thursday suggest.
“FIFA has been made aware of a series of allegations involving the Secretary-General and has requested a formal investigation by the FIFA Ethics Committee,” the organization said in a statement.
Benny Alon, an Israeli-American who has been arranging World Cup hospitality packages since 1990, accused Mr. Valcke in a meeting with The Wall Street Journal and other international news organizations of using him as a conduit to sell tickets at marked-up prices for his own gain.
Accompanied by a banker and lawyers who have worked with him in his dealings with FIFA, Mr. Alon showed what he said were email conversations in which Mr. Valcke appears to express hopes that “documents”—which Mr. Alon said was a code word between the two of them for proceeds from ticket sales—would be his pension fund and tells Mr. Alon to “go ahead” with what Mr. Alon describes as a huge sale.
Barry Berke, a lawyer for Mr. Valcke, said his client “unequivocally denies the fabricated and outrageous accusations by Benny Alon.” Mr. Berke said Mr. Valcke received nothing from Mr. Alon, adding his deal with FIFA was approved by its legal counsel.
Mr. Alon said he was making the revelations now because he felt time was running out to seek financial compensation for tickets he said FIFA hadn’t properly delivered to his company.
Mr. Valcke has said he will leave FIFA with President Sepp Blatter after an special election on Feb. 26 to decide Mr. Blatter’s successor. Mr. Blatter announced in June he would step down after the May arrest of 14 soccer officials in a U.S. corruption investigation. U.S. authorities and Swiss prosecutors in a parallel probe haven’t accused Mr. Blatter or Mr. Valcke of wrongdoing.
The emails couldn’t be independently verified, though some appeared to come from a Gmail account in Mr. Valcke’s name and others from his FIFA email address.
The claim comes amid what prosecutors say are widening criminal probes of world soccer’s governing body FIFA by the U.S. Justice Department and Swiss prosecutors. Mr. Valcke hasn’t been named in either investigation.
Mr. Alon’s company, JB Sports Marketing, signed a contract with FIFA in April 2010 that gave him the rights to buy no more than 8,750 tickets for each of the 2010, 2014 and 2018 World Cups, according to documents reviewed by the Journal.
Mr. Alon said Mr. Valcke offered in a March 2013 meeting at FIFA headquarters in Zurich to upgrade 2,400 tickets in his 2014 allotment with tickets for more desirable games if he agreed to split what Mr. Alon said would amount to roughly $4 million from the sales.
He said Mr. Valcke gave him permission to sell them above face value, even though that was prohibited by his deal with FIFA. Mr. Alon sold his entire allotment of tickets, though he said he didn’t turn money over to Mr. Valcke because Mr. Valcke instructed him to hold it for him. Mr. Alon said he and Mr. Valcke never decided how the money would be transferred.
Mr. Alon and officials familiar with FIFA ticketing said Mr. Valcke was able to get JB Sports Marketing high-quality tickets because as secretary-general he had access to a cache he could distribute to sponsors and other associates of the organization at his discretion.
Mr. Alon said he didn’t finalize the financial terms of his personal deal with Mr. Valcke in writing. However, in April 2013 an email from what Mr. Alon says is Mr. Valcke’s Gmail account instructed Mr. Alon to hold off on giving him any “documents” until after a possible run for the FIFA presidency in 2015.
“For the documents close them somewhere and we go through next time,” an April 2013 email reads. “In a potential race for presidency cannot look at them until my decision on future is clear. Documents are my pension fund when looking for something else if not anymore at FIFA by end of 2014 first half of 2015 at latest!”
Mr. Alon and his lawyer said nothing he did violates Swiss or U.S. law.
Mr. Valcke has been one of the most powerful men in world soccer. Since his appointment as FIFA’s secretary-general in 2007, he has been responsible for much of the organization’s day-to-day operations. His role under Mr. Blatter—who announced in June he would step down following the arrest of 14 soccer officials in May in a corruption investigation in which Mr. Blatter hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing—involves everything from working with member associations to negotiating with key sponsors and rights-holders.
Mr. Valcke has already come under scrutiny from U.S. investigators for signing off on a FIFA payment of $10 million that was supposed to go to South Africa’s 2010 World Cup Organizing Committee but instead went to accounts controlled by former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago. Mr. Valcke has acknowledged he approved the payment but denied wrongdoing.
U.S. prosecutors allege the payment was made at the behest of South African officials from a FIFA controlled account in exchange for Mr. Warner’s support for South Africa’s World Cup bid. Mr. Warner, who was arrested on fraud charges, has denied any wrongdoing.
Mr. Valcke has said he understood the money was to fulfill South Africa’s pledge to donate some proceeds from the World Cup to countries that represented the African diaspora.
Mr. Valcke first joined the organization in 2003 as the Director of Television and Marketing. But he was fired from that post in 2006 after a New York judge found that he had lied and negotiated in bad faith for World Cup sponsorship deals with Visa and MasterCard.
That ruling was overturned on appeal in the spring of 2007 and in June Mr. Valcke returned to FIFA in his present job. Since the FIFA scandal broke in May, he has steadfastly said he has done nothing wrong.
While operating another firm, JB Sports Marketing, Mr. Alon also worked at ISE, a now-defunct, Swiss-based company that handled ticketing and hospitality responsibilities for the 2006 World Cup.
The company, a joint venture of Dentsu Inc. and Publicis Groupe S.A., paid FIFA 270 million Swiss francs ($278 million) for a contract to resell some 350,000 tickets, though it later returned 105,000 tickets to the FIFA ticketing office, Mr. Alon said, after FIFA asked for them back so it could provide them to another ticketing agent.
Mr. Alon worked for ISE and JB Sports Marketing simultaneously until he left ISE in 2005. He was hired as an independent contractor after the 2006 World Cup by ISE investors to find out what happened to roughly 8,400 tickets that ISE was supposed to sell but that didn't appear in a final sales report. He was also given the task of seeking compensation for the 105,000 returns requested by FIFA.
Mr. Alon and people with knowledge of discussions between him and FIFA at that time said FIFA agreed to sell premium tickets to future World Cups to his company, JB Sports Marketing, in exchange for him ceasing to pursue claims regarding the 2006 tournament—an agreement FIFA and JB Sports Marketing say is legal under Swiss law. That private settlement resulted in Mr. Alon’s 2010 deal to receive tickets for the 2010, 2014 and 2018 World Cups, according to Mr. Alon and people familiar with FIFA’s involvement in the matter.
Mr. Alon said Mr. Valcke’s offer to improve the quality of his allotment occurred after he complained that he stood to lose substantial money if FIFA only allowed him to purchase tickets to less desirable matches, before the deal was improved.
Although Mr. Alon’s contract with FIFA prohibited him from reselling the tickets at a mark-up unless they were part of a larger hospitality package, Mr. Alon said he outlined his early sale orders on the tickets above face value in a series of emails to Mr. Valcke’s Gmail account in the spring of 2013. In those emails, which the Journal has examined, he makes it clear he was selling the tickets without hospitality packages.
In one of those alleged communications, a March 2013 email, Mr. Alon asked Mr. Valcke for permission to pursue what he describes as a “huge sell.” The supposed response from Mr. Valcke’s account reads, “You can go ahead.”
The next month, in an email with the subject line “Pension Fund”, Mr. Alon says he wrote to Mr. Valcke to report that he had sold 600 tickets with a face value of $190 for $570 each, and 150 tickets with a face value of $350 for $1,300.
“We are doing better than the New York Stock Exchange,” Mr. Alon wrote.
Mr. Alon didn't disclose any reply from Mr. Valcke.
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