Pornographic Brazilian Pornography

There was yet more death and mayhem on the streets of Rio as another cyclist was killed. This time (as opposed to the triathlete killed in Leblon) there will be no solidarity cycle and no collective gnashing of teeth  as the cyclist was working, delivering water and gas canisters along impossibly crowded streets in the Zona Norte. The second paragraph in the ever-sensitive O Bobo was dedicated to the traffic problems caused by the accident. An excellent mapping initiative that will register crimes committed against cyclists has come of these recent deaths, but Rio remains an insanely dangerous place to ride a bike.

Following the death in Leblon, O Bobo revealed that on average, Rio’s buses accumulate traffic fines like the Guarda Municipal collects crack addicts. One bus on the line that killed the triathlete had 136 infractions in four years.  There have been innumerable fawning media reports about Rio’s intelligent city project and the mayor has used his technological initiatives to hobnob with the global elite (really looking forward to that Clinton visit in December!). But what’s the point of having an expensive IBM monitoring system when all you can do is watch in HD the streets flood and people get killed by buses? A “smart city” doesn’t willfully place its citizens at risk and then spend millions to watch them suffer.

Way back in 2007 when no one outside of Rio knew the name Eduardo Paes, he was plugging away as Rio’s state secretary of sport and leisure as the city prepared for the Pan American Games. The Olympic Stadium was over budget, poorly placed, behind schedule and, surprise surprise, poorly constructed. It also took on the name of a corrupt and disgraced former FIFA president. The stadium, like its declining namesake, has been closed for business because the roof is about to fall down. It has likely been in this condition for some time and the public has been at risk for years. Paes explained the other day that the stadium was constructed in a hurry  and that he was not at the head of the city government at the time so, hey, what can you do about the past? What exactly was Paes doing in his position of the state’s most important sporting institution when the stadium was constructed? If it is anything like the current secretary of Sport and Leisure, he likely gave nonsensical and offensive interviews with the intention of using the position as a political springboard. (Amber Alert: Marcia Lins).

Oh yes, because of old João’s peccadilloes with the ISL case and FIFA bribery he has not only had to resign from his honorary position at the IOC, but also at FIFA. The mayor-king has also given a green light for the changing of the Engenhão stadium name saying, “I’ve changed the name of a lot of things in Rio. I’ve changed them because I waned to. Botafogo has the naming rights and can call the stadium whatever it wants.” A little known fact is that Botafogo F.R. (who has the concessionary rights for a song) changed the name of the stadium years ago to Stadium Rio. Maybe we should change the name to Joana Havelange, João’s granddaughter who is one of the top people on the 2014 WC organizing committee, just to keep the black box clamped shut. More reasonably, there is a movement by several of Rio’s council people to put the name Nilton Santos on the Engenhão. Personally, I think the name Milton Santos would elevate geo-political consciousness a bit more (if you’re into geography porn).

In case all of this news didn’t excite you, here’s the money shot: After 63 years in the public domain, more than 750 million dollars of deforms in the last six years and a total dis-characterization of one of the world’s greatest sporting venues,  the Maracanã  has been privatized by the State of Rio de Janeiro. The winning consortium is comprised of IMX (Eike Batista’s main holding company that was contracted by the government to do the economic viability study), Odebrecht (Lula’s favorite civil construction firm), and AEG (a US based entertainment group that owns MLS teams and administers 120 stadiums around the world). The details of the concession are too painful to write down, but the rub is that over the next 35 years the state will receive less than 20% of its investment. I will be looking through this particular slice of this futuristic porn in the coming months but might not have the courage (or falta de vegonha) to write it down.

Guilty, as not charged (volenti non fit iniuria)

To the chagrin of fans of justice everywhere it seems as if Ricardo Teixeira and João Havelange will shuffle off this mortal coil not having served a single hour in prison. Having read through the Canton of Zug’s judicial findings, I can report that the scandal is almost too scandalous. The 15 shades of details are too juicy not to share, so in what follows I provide some quotes from the document that more or less weave the story together. If you are pressed for time, here’s the summary:

Criminal proceedings against former CBF front man Texeira, ex-FIFA boss Havelange and FIFA itself for mismanagement, embezzlement and institutionalized bribery were dropped. All of these charges were documented vis a vis bank statements and contracts dealing with the marketing rights for the World Cups in 2002 and 2006 (among other things). The good Andrew Jennings has profiled these crimes in detail. The court ruled not to continue with prosecution, but considered the defendants guilty because they made partial repayment of the bribes they had received. The logic here: if they weren’t guilty, why would they have given back some of the money? This money was taken in bribes to award World Cup broadcast rights to ISL, a now defunct marketing company. At the end of the day, these criminals took bribes, made millions and then had to pay back a fraction in order to stop further prosecution, thereby stopping the investigation through a sideways admission of guilt. Along the way, they managed to come up with some defensive gems worthy of Michelle Prudhomme.  

From the Swiss Canton of Zug:

Ricardo Terra Texeira unlawfully used assets entrusted to him for his own personal enrichment several times. These commissions, which Ricardo Terra Texeira received due to his position in FIFA, were pocketed by him (for his own use), and he failed to disclose or hand over the payments to FIFA.

Joao Havelange unlawfully used assets entrusted to him for his own enrichmentseveral times. He acted with intent to enrich himself unlawfully.

 FIFA is accused of having a deficient organization in its enterprise

Blatter escapes responsibility:

The new provisions of the statute of limitations are, in principle, only applicable, with reservations for certain exceptions, if the criminal offence was committed after they came into force.

With  this, current president Blatter gets to wiggle his way out of things. FIFA released the most ridiculous interview I can remember, where Blatter had 5 very difficult questions put to him by the FIFA press office and published the responses on the website. Follow this link for a laugh. Ignorance is profitable bliss, ‘cuz you just ran out of time, biatch!

“concerning the question of a possible unlawful enrichment under a legal limitation of time aspect are obsolete. October 1, 2003, and thus FIFA cannot be criminally liable for acts carried out prior to this date.”

This witty riposte dealt with one of the off-side traps pulled by the Texeira-Havelange legal team:

The federal court rejected the argument that the assumption that the requirement to deliver had been waived suggested that corresponding agreements were customary (FCD 132 III 466,consid. 4.3). Customs may play a role in assessing the mental elements of an offence, however not when determining whether a duty to disclose or to surrender possession exists.

The defendants had argued that they did not have to return the bribe payments because in Africa and South America, bribing is a “customary” way of doing business. Not to have accepted bribes as part of the contract would not only have been bad form, it would have unduly cheated them of their rightful income. This is a lesson that has been well learned by Brazil Worker’s Party, that has in turn instructed the rest of us that corruption generates impunity.

A related argument for keeping the money was that there was not need to return the bribes to FIFA because FIFA would have had to surrender them to the Swiss bankruptcy court that dealt with the failure of ISL marketing (which had paid the bribes). Thus, it couldn’t be argued that the president and vice-president of FIFA had harmed the organization by taking money destined for it. Genius.

The news coming out of FIFA these days is that they are hotfooting it to institute some reforms. This week they appointed an independent ethics team to tell the fat vats at FIFA how to behave.

This is the crack team they hand-picked for the task (we’ll try to find out more about the massive experience that Messers. Torres, Jones and Abderrahmane bring to the table from their respective homelands):

Appointment of the following persons as members of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee until the 63rd FIFA Congress in 2013:

Chairman: Michael J Garcia (USA)

Mr Robert Torres (Guam)

Mr Les Murray (Australia)

Mr Ronald Jones (Barbados)

Mr Jorge Iván Palacio (Colombia)

Mr Noël Le Graët (France)

Mr Ahmed Ould Abderrahmane (Mauritania)

One of the reasons is that FIFA promised to do something about the institutional corruption and incompetence, which made them liable for the lunatics creating their own asylum is the Zug court’s finding that:

If a felony or misdemeanor is committed in an enterprise while exercising a business activity

within the scope of the enterprise and if, due to the deficient organization of the enterprise, the

act cannot be attributed to a natural person, then according to Art. 102 para. 1 PC, the act will

be attributed to the enterprise. In such case, the enterprise can be liable for a fine of up to 5

million francs.

5 million Francs to FIFA is bus fare.

With all the evidence mounted against them, we see the cleverness of the slippery, criminal mastermind at work:

Both for FIFA, Ricardo Terra Texeira and Joao Havelange, the fruits of criminal acts have to be discounted if there can never be the subject of a conviction due to the application of the statute of limitations and/or because they cannot be conclusively attributed to one Accused or the other.

This is the same way that the World Cup institutional architecture is constructed. No one has ultimate responsibility for anything, thus everyone is responsible for nothing, so anything at all can happen.

In the end, nothing more is going to happen to these crooks, but their names have been tarnished. Here is the naïve report by the Swiss judge:

It does not seem to be necessary to impose an unsuspended sentence in order to prevent the Accused from committing further felonies or misdemeanors. The current proceedings, the psychological stress connected therewith and ultimately also the surrender of not unconsiderable tangible assets should in future prevent the Accused from undermining the purposes of an association that is so clearly committed to activities that unite different peoples. If this finding applies to Ricardo Terra Texeira, then it is even more so the case with regard to Joao Havelange. This is not least of all due to his status as a retired person, which he has been for quite some time, and his advanced age, which will almost certainly preclude a criminal act.

And finally, the icing that should be written on a cake the size of Pão de Açucar:

It must be noted that none of the accused parties explicitly acknowledged a breach of the law; however, this finding is put in perspective by the fact that reparation has been paid in the amount of millions of francs, which can be considered as an implied confession of criminal conduct.

GUILTY, AS NOT CHARGED!!!!

Impunity and Continuity

Legal proceedings that deal with corruption and influence peddling don’t have much staying power in Brazil. 

This week, the former Ministry of Sport Orlando Silva was fortunate enough to have been out of the national and international spotlight for long enough that the President’s Ethics Commission decide to end the investigation into his involvement with a mutli-million dollar corruption scheme. Not having been close to the proceedings, it is impossible to say whether or not there really was a lack of evidence to proceed or if the ethics commission was late for lunch or if this was another example of the press acting as a political bludgeon. Either way, there is no information available on the commission’s website as to the investigation, just some small news pieces saying the Silva is clean. I am not suggesting that the Ethics Commission doesn’t do a fine job of rooting out corruption, just that there appears to be a pattern in Brazil of people getting involved in corruption scandals, losing their jobs, and then being cleared of any wrongdoing. Then, to maintain the status quo, another person just like them, or at least from the same party (in this case the Brazilian Communist Party, PCdoB), is put into power to continue with the same policies.

Take the case of our favorite gout-ridden sycophant, Ricardo Texeira. One year ago, he was riding high in the inner sanctum of FIFA even though he bet on the wrong horse in FIFA’s farcical elections. He had thoroughly dominated Brazilian football for nearly two decades, having ridden to power on the strength of a good marriage. However, he and the ex-father in law had been involved in some shady dealings with FIFA’s now defunct marketing arm and the FIFA president Blatter threatened to divulge documents exposing their (and likely his) involvement. To avoid the gallows before shuffling off the mortal coil, J. Marie Havelange resigned from his honorary post at the IOC and Texeira was forced out of FIFA and the CBF. Where is he now? Living the Latin American millionaire exile life in Florida. Where are the legal proceedings?  None. What has happened with the CBF? Tricky Ricky’s loyalists were stuck into power with the full and obsequious approval of the feudal overlords that control the clubs. What happened with his position on the executive committee at FIFA? Another fat-fingered patsy was put in his place to keep the ball rolling for the “good of the game.” The media naturalizes this process, letting the air out of what should be an expanding balloon of collective, righteous indignation. In the meantime we can be sure that Texeira and the CBF and FIFA are as clean as Byron Moreno’s whistle.

The lesson here is that one can engage in corrupt practices, or be associated closely enough with shady dealings to arouse the sleepy dogs of justice, lose position and power, but keep the money and rest comfortably knowing that the dogs will be thrown some other bones to chew on. Corruption and impunity and forgetting are the pistons that drive the World Cup forward and as long as we keep lubricating the machine with public money and collective passivity, nothing will save us from hurtling over the cliff while 1% of the passengers smugly don their golden parachutes. 

Going, going, nearly gone

There have been some big shakeups in the world of Brazilian football and more are about to happen. Today, or yesterday, it doesn’t matter, Ricardo Texeira, Mr. Jowls, Sickly Ricky, resigned from his post on the FIFA executive council. FIFA says they want an “immediate replacement”, ostensibly before anyone can notice that R.T. will be replaced with someone just like him, only healthier.

Grondona, a virile physical specimen

Nice medal, but who ate all the pies?

CONMEBOL, the South American football confederation, has three members on the FIFA executive committee. The remaining two are old school gangsters – Nicolás Leoz, a Paraguayan strongman, and Julio Grondona an Argentine snake in the grass. Both have been in power since the 19^th century and are long overdue for one way tickets to Miami via Devil's Island. That nothing ever changes in South American football while the quality of play is detonated by the export of the best talent to Europe should concern the continent’s sporting press. The only voices in the shiny, happy wilderness of increased consumer consumption continue to come from the good lads at ESPN Brasil. I keep wondering how much longer it will take for ESPN’s parent company, Disney/ABC, to figure out that their mouse ears are being continually tweaked by Júlio Cruz and Juca Kufuri.

On a lighter note, João Havelange has been hospitalized with what appears to be a serious infection. Incredibly, unbelievably, yet predictably, I received an email yesterday citing this criminal mastermind for the Nobel Peace Prize!!! Havelange’s family fortune came from made millions dealing arms between Belgium and Brazil and then from building bus companies. Havelange coddled dictators and murderers throughout his career always asserting, “I don’t do politics I do sport.” He was cozy with the military regimes in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay and was constantly re-elected to the top spot of FIFA by greasing the palms of Asian and African dictators. Since 1974 he has been pulling the strings at FIFA. Blatter is his creation. Sickly Ricky was his son-in-law.

When the 96 yr old Havelange shuffles off this mortal coil in the next days or weeks, it’s only a matter of time, get ready for a white-washed version of his “grand contribution” to global sport. Nobel Peace Prize, indeed! The man should be tried at the Hague! Nuzman, head of the Brazilian Olympic Committee and Rio 2016, went to kneel at his bedside yesterday, like a loyal godson gathering a few more pearls of raspy-throated wisdom. I am going to make myself preemptively sick so that I can pick up the obituaries with something approximating calm.

Was it something they ate? Go get 'em Andrew!!!!!

This may be the physical end of the Havlange-Texeira era but their legacies have created a scoliosis-ridden sporting body that will take the rest of us decades to correct. All it will take to rub the shine off these Teflon-coated gangsters is the release of those Swiss court documents that chronicle the extent and depth of the corruption scandals that these two were involved in.

For those of you that missed it, Romário, the former world player of the year and now state deputy for Rio said that Texeria’s removal from positions of authority at the CBF was akin to “removing a cancer from Brazilian football.” Touché, my good deputy.

Texeria Fora! E Daí?

Yesterday, an axe fell on the head of the serpent. Ricardo Texeira, the president of the Brazilian Footbal Confederation (CBF) for 26 years resigned less than a week after he was given a unanimous vote of confidence by Brazil’s 27 state football federations. Texeira came to power by virtue of his marriage to the daughter of João Havelange, president of FIFA from 1974-1998. The old man was probably controlling most of the big decisions of little Ricky but then he too came up against corruption charges and was forced to resign his position at the IOC a few months ago. Two of the biggest names in Brazilian sport have fallen in the past three months. What this means is unclear as João H. is still held in absurdly high esteem and R.T. is bound for the land of fugitive Latin American criminals, Florida.

We have Andrew Jennings to thank for much of these developments. Andrew has been tireless in his investigations into FIFA corruption. Once he started pulling on some threads it wasn’t long before he found the Havelange-Texeira clan knee-deep in merda. We can also point to petitions circulated by the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores e Torcedoras (ANT, www.torcedores.org.br), which called for the head of Texeira throughout 2010, collecting thousands of signatures. The combination of rigorous investigative journalism and civil society activism is powerful – let’s hope that the documents being released by the Comitês Populares in Brazil will have similar effects on the abusive and opaque reign of Carlos Nuzman at Rio 2016 and the Brazilian Olympic Committee.

The loss of Texeira will not, unfortunately, change much about the fundamental structure of the World Cup. His daughter, Joanna Havelange, is the Secretary General of Brazil 2014. Her qualifications for this job were the same as her dad's, none. The rest of the executives for the World Cup are the same people that helped stuff the workings of the CBF inside a black box for so many years. It is important to remember that just last week Sickly Ricky received a unanimous vote of confidence. This allowed him the chance to maintain the power structure through the next CBF election. The acting president of the CBF is 78 years old and recently stole a winner’s medal at a juniors' tournament. The Brazil 2014 Local Organizing Committee has no president yet, but Ronaldo Fenômeno will likely step into that role as a figurehead.

This is a chance to start pulling on even more threads, unraveling the Indonesian-stitched fabric of Brazil’s canary-yellow shirt. I do not have much confidence that the Brazilian media will do this as they are focused on the serpent’s head lying on the ground as the rest of the snake slithers back into its hole to shake off the hangover. This saga has long felt like something out of The Open Veins of Latin America: occasionally a coronel gets shot in his office, but the power structure remains the same. As the Minister of Sport showed the other day, even when the Communists get into positions of power, nothing much changes. 

Fora Teixeira!!!!

Fora Ricardo Teixeira! E daí?

It is long past the time when Ricardo Texeira should have been sent to Rio’s Bangu One prison where he could share a cell with the dozens of Military Police who were imprisoned for having the temerity to strike (albeit briefly) for higher wages. Incredible what happens in Rio when you take on the government:  só porrada.  It appears as if Mr. Jowls, as I like to call him, has finally run out of escape hatches and is going to resign from the CBF, some say today, maybe tomorrow, certainly before March.

Reports have R.T. literally hiding in his hotel room to avoid Herr Blatter at a recent CONMEBOL meeting in Buenos Aires. The man is not well, physically or mentally, nor has he been for some time. Romário is ramping up his criticisms of the feudal system that counts as professional football in Brasil, making it clear that Tricky Ricky (as our good friend Andrew Jennings calls him) is only a major figurehead in a very sick footballing world.

As Mr. Jowls flees to the dangling dongle of Florida (where he will no doubt be immune from prosecution and extradition – USAmericans please write your government asking that this misanthrope’s visa be revoked) what will be the implications for the World Cup? R.T. is the president of the Local Organizing Committee, his daughter is the Secretary General of the 2014 World Cup, his personal secretary director of communications. Will there be a house cleaning as FIFA tries to distance itself from the sordid legacy of João Havelange and his criado?

There are rumors floating about that FIFA is ready to cut one or two cities form the cup, or that they were waiting to see how they could appear to tidy house while maintaining the status quo before they suggested any major changes to Brazil 2014. Some rumors have suggested a re-working of the match schedule in order to regionalize travel. I won’t repeat the absurdities of the current scheme, check this old post if you don’t remember what the current plan is. There are some chairs being shuffled, but will they clean the stains?

Dilma should use the imminent fall of Dr. Jowls to nationalize the CBF. This would have various effects:

1. End the obscene and absurd position of FIFA that politics and sport are separate categories of human endeavor. FIFA cannot ban Brazil from international competition, in this regard, the government could immediately take the upper hand in negotiations over the World Cup Law. (Not that it really matters as the Worker’s Party is quickly privatizing everything in sight. For those gringos out there that have still have some romanticized vision of Lula’s lefty politics, the PT is about as progressive as the Obama administration on immigration). 
2. Reduce the influence of cartolas in the running of the game. The person who is taking control of the CBF in R.T.’s absence is an 80 year old who recently stole a medal from the winner’s stand at a junior tournament in São Paulo. The second-string keeper was the last one on the podium and got a handshake, nothing more. FDP.
3. Have concursos públicos to administer the positions in the CBF, hopefully professionalizing and making more transparent the running of football in Brazil.   
4. Pull the plug on OGlobo.

It won’t likely happen, but one year ago it didn’t seem likely that Teixeira would be facing criminal charges in Brazil and Europe and fleeing with his family to South Florida. Let’s keep up the pressure!!!! Fora a familia Teixeria-Havelange ! Nacionalize já a CBF!!!!