South Africa denies Fifa World Cup bribe
Preroria, 28 May - (ANA) - South African officials have dismissed allegations by US investigators that a $10m (£6.5m) bribe was organised for Fifa officials to host the 2010 World Cup. There had been a "clean audit report" at the end of the World Cup, a government minister said. A football official added that the bid was run by "men of integrity", including the late Nelson Mandela. South Africa was the first African nation to host the World Cup.
Fifa, the world football governing body, chose it ahead of Morocco. The South African government promised to pay $10m to former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner and his co-conspirators in exchange for winning the right to host the tournament, an FBI indictment alleges. The indictment later states that the South Africans "were unable to arrange for the payment to be made directly from government funds" so instead the $10m was sent through Fifa using funds that would otherwise have gone to South Africa to support the World Cup. In the South African government's first response to the allegation, Jeff Radebe, a minister in the president's office, said that leading accounting firm Ernest & Young had given South Africa a "clean audit report" at the end of the World Cup. Swiss prosecutors have also opened a separate investigation into the bidding process for the World Cup tournaments in 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar. Swiss police said they would question 10 Fifa executive committee members who participated in the votes that selected Russia and Qatar in December 2010. (ANA)

FA/ANA/28 May 2015---------