More than one way to skin a FIFA cat; or to bribe him

There are plenty of things in this old world I know absolutely nothing about.  Zilch.  Like women’s shoes. Or fly fishing. Or macramé.

And bribes. I know diddly-squat about the high-dollar, high-stakes, hifalutin world of bribery.

Why would I? I’m a journalist. Far as I can tell the very first requirements of a good, proper bribe are bags full of cash.  As a journalist, I measure my cash and my paychecks in little cups, not big barrels.

But I did me some thinking on this subject over the weekend as it relates to the recent awarding of World Cup 2018 and 2022.

I think everyone assumes that financial flimflam may be exchanged at the highest levels, that money would change hands “A to B” in a rather straight forward, linear fashion right from the top.  And it may.  I honestly don’t know. This is all hypothetical and theoretical, of course – I have no more evidence than anyone else of anything improper actually taking place in and around last week’s Zurich zaniness.

But maybe there was something else at work … maybe any malfeasance goes on a couple of rungs lower on the ladder? 

Let’s say me and a bunch of buddies are in construction. Big-job stuff, like hotels, high rises and shopping centers. And stadiums. And train stations.

Now let’s say we do a lot of business with the well-heeled Middle Eastern lands, like the UAE, Saudi Arabia. And Qatar.

So my buddies and I begin to look at plans that would involve oodles of construction contracts. Like the erection of lots of stadiums. And train stations. If these could be worth millions and millions to me and my buddies, wouldn’t it behoove us to get in the game, so to speak?  To cozy up to the deciders … and maybe to pony up, too?

Or how about this: what if me and my buds owned a security company, one with close ties to the people who award contracts to these things. Wouldn’t a World Cup provide a whole kit and caboodle of business?

What about the owners of those hotels in Qatar? Don’t they have a big stake in the game?

Obviously, all this applies to Russia, too. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says the original budget outline of $640 million dollars won’t come close to covering all the related prep costs. His estimates put the cost of construction of the stadiums and the infrastructure at around $10 billion U.S.

That’s a lot of incentive, isn’t it? So you look at who is getting the projects?  Who gets the contracts to install the rails they are talking about to link the far-flung venues? Who gets the contracts to manage them?  Who owns and invests in those companies?

All of this goes back to one central point, one missing element in all this: transparency of FIFA’s processes.  At least everyone would have a fighting chance of following the money.

Again, I don’t know much about this stuff. What I wrote above is most likely just a starting point, a “child’s view” of high-dollar graft. You MBAs and business people with more book-schoolin’ on ways of the financial world probably can take this a little further …