Andrew Jennings, the journalist delivering damning and uncomfortable Olympic truth upon truth down the decades and author of Lords of the Rings, and Francois Carrard, the lawyer working inside the the IOC tent, have passed away within a day of each other. 

Two of the biggest players in Olympic sport for the past three decades and more, both men will be mourned, for different reasons by different people. 

Carrard headed the FINA Reform Committee of late, the group’s recommendations, including the establishment of an independent Integrity Unit, now approved by the leadership and Congreess of nations at the global regulator for aquatics.

Jennings is the man we concentrate on today, as one of those whose work underpinned the very reason why Carrard sat on reform committees and conducted related work long overdue.

Jennings was the giant thorn in the side of Olympic leaders and the in-house Media Commission and the journalists who failed to call out what Jennings made all too clear when it came to the corruption and omertà at the heart of IOC rot. 

Jens Weinreich has published an 80-page tribute to Andrew Jennings at Sport & Politics, with contributions from 53 authors from 17 countries, including one from me – 

In tribute to Jennings, SOS recalls an editorial from my 2015 SwimVortex archive in which I consider a hearing of the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security, its focus the beautiful game and ethics.

The Senate committee hearing raised many key issues that explain why FINA and its members, despite seven years of resistance, were always bound to have to reach for radical reform of swimming governance if they were to survive.

The level of transparency and the keen discussion and blunt honesty that flows at the 2015 Senate hearing at the heart of American democracy is precisely where FINA stakeholders, including organisations such as USA Swimming, should have taken their cue from. Perhaps they did; perhaps they will. At FINA level, the stripping of honour from Dr. Lothar Kipke, provides some evidence that the message has finally hit the spot and prompted a change of heart, min, mindset and direction.

The Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security described its session as “a hearing on FIFA, soccer’s international governing authority, which has faced recent criticism for human-rights abuses ahead of the 2022 men’s World Cup and is under federal investigation for racketeering conspiracy and corruption. Veteran freelance journalist Andrew Jennings and Dan Flynn, the CEO and secretary general of the U.S. Soccer Federation, are among the witnesses”.

Here is a reminder of that session and the key role played by Andrew Jennings – RIP.

The Senate Committee Hearing With Andrew Jennings – August 2015

Editorial – from the Archive – 2015

The Ugly Side Of The Beautiful Game

The day brought news that FIFA president of 17 years, Sepp Blatter, being handeda 90-day provisional suspension. Members of Fifa’s ethics committee recommended the sanction after the Swiss attorney general opened criminal proceedings against the 79-year-old.

Blatter is accused of signing a contract “unfavourable” to football’s governing body and making a “disloyal payment” to Uefa president Michel Platini. Blatter denies any wrongdoing and his lawyers said he had “not been notified of any action”.

European football chief Michel Platini was also hit with a provisional 90-day ban over the £1.3 million suspected illegal payment he received from Blatter from work he says he carried out nine years ago. If the payment is proven to be illegal, gone are Platini’s hopes of succeeding his former mentor as president of the scandal-plagued governing body.

The investigatory chamber of FIFA’s ethics committee met today and the decision was issued by Hans Joachim Eckert, the head of FIFA’s ethics adjudicatory chamber.

The 79-year-old Blatter was interrogated over the Platini payment and another suspected illegal deal with disgraced former vice-president of FIFA Jack Warner.

What has this to do with swimming? A great deal when it comes to the structures, mindset and model of governance for many sports beyond football/soccer.

At a Senate Congress Committee, Capitol Hill – Russell Senate Office Building, Senator Jerry Moran, right, chaired a Senate hearing on the state of International Soccer Governance (FIFA).

Integrity, ethics and the entire model of international sports governance, including a lack of independent checks and balances, were highlighted.

We hear why some say FIFA is worse than the Mafia. Chief among those saying that is Andrew Jennings, the British journalist who worked with the FBI on work that led to the indictment of a club of high-flyers in an investigation still ongoing. Jennings’ contribution, alone, is worth the two hours it takes to watch the video below but all four witnesses and the two men in the chair make this democratic process essential viewing for any who care about the poor state of governance in swimming (and the wider world of federations across many sport beyond).

In stretching to the role of the U.S. in international soccer, concerns over human rights abuses and foreign workers in Qatar – including a woeful death count in the country scheduled to host of the 2022 World Cup – and the pay disparity between men and women in soccer, the hearing can be watched and listened to at two levels:

1. for what it is and what it means in soccer
2. for what it means and how it translates and relates to the world of wider international sports governance, swimming our primary focus, of course

First up the link to the two-hour tape of the Senate hearing. If you can find the time to watch it through, all the better, whether you are someone for whom this is confirmation; whether you are someone trying to understand what transparent democracy means; or whether you are right down at the deep end of the spectrum of understanding on FINA and haven’t yet connected the dots of a network of governance in need of replacement because nothing else will get the job done.

Below the following link to the official Senate hearing video (mirrored in the YouTube video above), we relate some of the discussion to why this is about much more than soccer and why coaches and others gathered in Cleveland at ASCA Clinic this month overwhelmingly supported a move for change, revolution and even replacement of FINA as the folk running swimming at global level.

• The Hearing On Capitol Hill – the official video in full

Stop The Senate Tape

The following is a trawl of that tape, interspersed with a few STOP THE SENATE TAPE notes where an issue talks to the schism in swimming. Note that the point is not to suggest financial corruption at FINA – but to point to the places where governance structures, wilful blindness, lack of transparency and open processes can, and do, lead. The following is here for the record of a Senate moment in sports history relevant to all sport, swimming included.

Senator Jerry Moran starts by saying that he does not believe Government should get involved in every scandal in the world of sport nor could he give any assurance that any outcome of the hearing on soccer governance would translate to the statue books in any way. But as chairman of a sub-committee overseeing the governance of professional sports, he believed that the issues deserved to have “public attention”.

“Corruption, bribery and other criminal activity” had become a part of international soccer. By shining light on that, he hoped that the public, current and future sponsors of sports events, the “media companies that supports the games today” will “better understand the consequences of allowing those governing soccer to continue without reform, including the tragic loss of life”.

According to some reports from organisations like Amnesty as many as 4,000 migrants workers will die before world cup starts. “That is appalling.”

Soccer gained profile in the United States when its women won the World Cup this year. Billions make up the budget of world soccer. Corruption and loss of life are part off that realm.

Senate Hearing Notes ’81 suspicious financial transactions’

“On May 27, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a 47-count indictment against 9 FIFA officials and 5 corporate executives, charging them with racketeering, bribery, wire fraud and money laundering”. Four other individuals and two corporate defendants have also pled guilty to various charges and Swiss investigators are looking at 81 suspicious financial transactions in relation to the World Cup bids of 2018 (Qatar) and 2022 (Russia).”

STOP THE SENATE TAPE: if you take the names of those indicted and trawl the history of gatherings among sporting blazers, the dots connect friendships and partnerships, shared committees, government posts and more between those now facing legal action and many in places of high office across a range of sports, including swimming.

Senator Moran adds: “The culture of corruption must be addressed… now is the time for the USA and the USA soccer federation to engage in meaningful reforms as well as elect a leader at FIFA who will spearhead long overdue changes in the organisation.”

He talks of the human lives lost and the consequences of “lapses in integrity”. He emphasises the need for the USA to take responsibility for “restoring integrity”.

“We cannot must not should not turn a blind eye to this issue any longer”

Senator Richard Blumenthal, right, of the commerce sub-committee on Consumer Protection, takes the microphone.

He refers to soccer as a growing sport in the USA and congratulates the USA women’s bream on its victory at the World Cup this year.

With a nod to that he addresses the champions directly when he states:

“The corruption in world soccer is a disservice to the game, it is a disrespect to them, it betrays the trust of countless men and women, many of them young people just beginning in this sport who have a right to expect better from the leaders of this sport.”

On the FIFA inquiries, he notes:

“What has been revealed so far is a Mafia-style crime syndicate in charge of this sport. My only hesitation in using that term is that it is almost insulting to the Mafia because the Mafia would never have been been so blatant, overt and arrogant in its corruption.”

The indictments pressed by the USA Justice Department, he added, showed that the organisation had a ‘chart that showed how it [the network of corruption] was run’.”

He asks: “… who knew about this criminal wrongdoing, when did they know it and … why did the not act more quickly? … These are classic questions involved in any racketeering conspiracy investigation.”

“The facts show that there had to be wilful ignorance or blatant incompetence on the part of many of the members of this organisation – and that’s true of U.S. soccer … they either knew about it or should have known about it and I’m not sure which is worse.”

The hearing, he hoped, would lay the groundwork for the kind of “far-reaching, fundamental reforms” of the kind that had been necessary in world sports in the past when scandal reared its head.

“I wanna know what reforms the US Soccer federation is planning to introduce to instil greater transparency and accountability in the governance of soccer in America. Not whether but what and when because clearly there is an urgent and immediate need for such reforms.”

Having soccer run by a billion-dollar enterprise run behind closed doors was “a recipe for disaster and a moral catastrophe”, he added.

One idea is to reorganise FIFA as a public corporation or at least some part of it as a public corporation, the Senator noted.

He urged private corporations that sponsor sports events to take responsibility, too. McDonald’s, Nike, Coca-Cola andVisa are all cited as having the chance to serve as “guardians of good governance” rather than acting as “silent beneficiaries who benefit from opaque governance”. He notes, without naming, that one of those corporations is mentioned in a FIFA-official indictment.