The spreading stain of corruption
Re: "The beginning of the end for Blatter?", Sport, May 29.
My mouth went dry upon reading about what US prosecutors called “the World Cup of fraud”, involving $150 million (Bt4.5 billion). Nine high-ranking Fifa officials stand accused, all colleagues of the organisation’s veteran president Sepp Blatter. If Mr Blatter survives the onslaught of calls for his resignation and is re-elected to another term after 17 years as president, then my estimate of the world football body’s corruptibility would be worse than that of Thailand, and possibly in the lowest quartile of transparency under Transparency International’s Index. The prosecutors accuse his colleagues of corruption while they were under his watch.
On this score, the United States deserves to be lauded as “the world’s policeman”. Now I realise that corruption is not limited to nationality, race or religion, but is a potential crime for all men of power. Indeed, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Songdej Praditsmanont
Bangkok
