THE president of the South African Football Association, Danny Jordaan, has denied the country bribed FIFA officials to help secure the 2010 World Cup through payments worth $10M.

The awarding of the 2010 tournament to South Africa has come under scrutiny following a series of bribery charges against FIFA officials by the U.S. authorities, who have made 14 arrests.
The U.S. district court has alleged widespread corruption within the governing body and detailed an alleged $10M payment that was transferred to Caribbean Football Union accounts by FIFA in return for three votes in South Africa’s favour.
South Africa was chosen as 2010 World Cup host ahead of Morocco in 2004 and Jordaan has insisted the payment four years later was not a bribe to secure votes
He told the South Africa’s Sunday Independent: “I haven’t paid a bribe or taken a bribe from anybody in my life. We don’t know who is mentioned there (in the U.S. indictment). And I don’t want to assume that I am mentioned.”
He continued: “How could we have paid a bribe for votes four years after we had won the bid?”
The South African minister for sport, Fikile Mbalula, tweeted on Sunday: “We must never be (sic) afraid to face the truth even from our worst enemies. #wedidnotbribe”
The U.S. indictment alleges the $10M payment was made in 2008 to “support the African Diaspora” and divided between three co-conspirators including Jack Warner, then president of the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football.
The indictment reads: “On January 2, 2008, January 31, 2008 and March 7, 2008, a high-ranking FIFA official caused payments of $616 000, $1 600 000, and $7 784 000 – totalling $10M – to be wired from a FIFA account in Switzerland to a Bank of America correspondent account in New York for credit to accounts held in the names of CFU and CONCACAF, but controlled by the defendant JACK WARNER, at Republic Bank in Trinidad and Tobago.”
Sepp Blatter was elected for a fifth term as president on Friday despite the arrests and controversy engulfing FIFA. (The Guardian)