Mohamed Bin Hammam will learn his fate Saturday when FIFA completes its probe into alleged bribery by the former presidential candidate although world soccer's governing body will be just as much under scrutiny. The investigation against the suspended 62-year-old Qatari head of the Asian Football Confederation will be seen as a test of FIFA chief Sepp Blatter's claim that his corruption-plagued organization can police itself without outside help. Blatter, starting what he has promised will be his fourth and final term as president, has promised to take a zero tolerance approach to corruption. However, his suggestions that former Dutch football great Johan Cruyff, ex-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Spanish tenor Placido Domingo could sit on a new watchdog committee have baffled many observers. The 75-year-old Blatter will be thousands of kilometers away in Argentina when the verdict is announced Saturday following a two-day hearing behind closed doors at FIFA's futuristic headquarters in the hills above Zurich. The investigation, led by Namibian judge Petrus Damaseb, has already suffered leaks of confidential information to the media, prompting Bin Hammam to claim that a campaign has been waged against him by unnamed enemies within FIFA. The investigations center around a meeting of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) in Port of Spain, Trinidad on May 10-11 where Bin Hammam was accused of offering cash in exchange for votes in the June 1 presidential election. Former CONCACAF president Jack Warner was also suspended for his part in the alleged bribery and both men were provisionally suspended three days before the vote for the FIFA presidency. Warner, who had promised to unleash a “tsunami” against FIFA, later resigned after 28 years with the world governing body and the investigation against him was dropped, with FIFA saying he would be presumed innocent. This raised more eyebrows, although FIFA said its hands were tied. CFU officials Debbie Minguell and Jason Sylvester will also go before the ethics committee at FIFA headquarters Friday, but all the attention will focus on Bin Hammam. Prompted by reports that he will be banned from football for life, the former Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president came out fighting. “Despite these clear attempts to besmirch my name in the public domain, I will not allow my own suspicions to dash my hopes or to make me think, as some would wish, that I will have to travel a long and hard road to clear my name of the stain of this politically motivated affair.” Bin Hammam now finds himself squarely in FIFA's firing line, but even if he does become the first high-profile victim of his former ally Blatter's anti-corruption purge, he is unlikely to go quietly.
