Revealed: Myanmar junta ‘crony’ given key role behind Fifa peace prize
Inaugural prize expected to be handed to Donald Trump but ‘process’ for choosing future winners to be proposed by controversial tycoon’s committee
It was the timing that set off the first alarm bells. With Donald Trump brooding over missing out on the Nobel peace prize, and shortly before Gianni Infantino, the president of world football’s governing body, Fifa, was due to meet the US president in Miami, an announcement was made.
In a press release and a post on his personal Instagram account last month, Infantino said Fifa would launch its very own peace prize, to be awarded each year to “individuals who help unite people in peace through unwavering commitment and special actions”.
Who could possibly be in the running on 5 December when the winner is announced at the glittery draw in Washington for next year’s World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico?
Infantino had already been accused of a breach of Fifa’s neutrality rules during an unconventional appearance next to his “friend” Trump at a Gaza peace summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
“I think we should all support what he’s doing because I think it is looking pretty good,” Infantino had said.
The subsequent lack of information about how the inaugural award-winner would be chosen could not fail to be a cause of further disquiet for those concerned this could just be a sop to Trump.
Those misgivings may now deepen. The Guardian has learned that the Fifa prize is seen internally as its version of the president’s award at Uefa, the European football body, suggesting Infantino’s say will be decisive.
It is also understood that a new “social responsibility” committee within Fifa has been given the central role in devising the “process” through which winners will be chosen – but will not sit before this year’s recipient is announced.
The background of the chair of the committee tasked with coming up with a proposal on the process may not convince everyone that he will speak truth to power either.
He is Zaw Zaw, the 59-year-old president of the Myanmar football federation for the past two decades who, along with his company, Max Myanmar, was the subject of EU and US economic sanctions at various points between 2009 and 2016.
The US state department described him in a press release in 2009 as one of the “cronies” of Myanmar’s brutal ruling military junta as it suppressed democracy and violated human rights.
According to US diplomatic cables from 2009 and leaked in 2010, Zaw Zaw, who was again described as “one of Burma’s up-and-coming cronies”, had interests in gems, cement and bottling plants, among other things, as well as being chair of the Myanmar football federation, and owner of Delta United, one of the professional football teams in what was then a new Myanmar national league.
“Contacts confirm that Zaw Zaw hired senior general Than Shwe’s grandson to play on the team,” the leaked cables went on, with reference to the country’s then dictator, who had been accused by the US of overseeing severe human rights abuses, including “extrajudicial killings”, custodial deaths, disappearances, rape and torture.
The Myanmar football federation did not respond to a request for comment. In an interview in 2013 with the South Morning China Post, Zaw Zaw was reported as saying that his only crime was “in this poor country, I have become rich”. He added: “Only the government has projects,. If I don’t do projects with them, who will I do projects with?”
Nick McGeehan, a co-director of FairSquare, a human rights advocacy group that published a report on Fifa last year, said Infantino’s personal announcement of the peace prize, seemingly without the involvement of Fifa’s council, the main decision-making body, was quite typical of the man.
Television crews at the 2022 Qatar World Cup had reportedly been ordered to show Infantino at least once during matches. An inscription on the Fifa club World Cup trophy read “inspired by FIFA president Gianni Infantino”.
But McGeehan said the Guardian’s findings highlighted a deeper problem at the Zurich-based sporting body. “These developments certainly suggest that this peace prize award process is being reverse-engineered to ensure the favoured result of President Infantino,” he said. “But there’s a structural problem. Infantino is like a sort of increasingly clownish symptom of the problem, but he is not the problem.”
In February 2016, delegates at a Fifa extraordinary congress in Zurich voted 176 to 22 in favour of adopting a radical reform package intended to herald a new dawn for an organisation that had been mired in scandals.
Rolling crises at the body had culminated a year earlier with more than a dozen plainclothes Swiss police officers, acting under instructions from the US Department of Justice (DoJ), entering the Baur Au Lac hotel in Zurich and arresting seven senior Fifa officials as part of an investigation into bribery and corruption.
There is no suggestion of similar corruption today, said McGeehan, but he argued that key changes proposed at this new dawn had not been properly implemented.
For example, the number of committees within Fifa has gone up rather than down as proposed, he noted. Fifa says this offers more oversight. FairSquare suggested it provided more opportunities for patronage.
A report published last year by FairSquare argued that the power of Fifa’s most senior and powerful officials was “rooted in a model of patronage that disincentivises ethical conduct”, with the national members seeking funds, or even lucrative committee positions, and those at the top of the governing body requiring political support for their climb up the greasy career pole. Fifa has described FairSquare’s findings as “unfair”.
Infantino was elected as Fifa president in 2016 on a platform of reform of its institutions but also that of increasing revenues to member associations, McGeehan said. “These two things are in absolute tension,” he added.
As to why Infantino would want to cosy up to certain leaders, McGeehan suggested that part of the story was that Infantino appeared “smitten” with Trump as well as Saudi Arabia’s de factor ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, whose country will host the men’s World Cup in 2034.
There were, though, also structural incentives that pushed Infantino to cleave close to leaders with power and money, he added.
“The only year Fifa makes money is in a men’s World Cup year,” McGeehan said. “So every men’s World Cup year, you need to squeeze as much money as possible out of your host. The way that you do that is you stick as closely to them as possible, because you’re going to take all of the broadcasting money, all of the sponsorship money, and you’re going to pass all the cost on to them, all the costs for hosting Saudi 2034, all the costs for hosting US 2026. You’re going to ask them for tax exemptions. So the whole process cleaves the president closer to these people.
“Infantino clearly likes [Trump and Prince Mohammed], and they probably recognise that he is a man with a big ego, but there’s a strategic reason he needs to do it because he needs their political support to deliver the revenue that entrenches his political support.”
Stephen Cockburn, Amnesty International’s head of labour rights and sport, said that while there was lip service and even structures that suggested human rights considerations were at the core of Fifa’s decision-making, it appeared that “finance and power” remained the priority.
McGeehan said he was concerned by what he viewed as Infantino’s “clear violation of the duty of neutrality of the Fifa code of ethics”. “There’s this incredible effort to sort of talk about transparency and accountability and all that,” he said, “but not change the way it’s actually done”.
A Fifa spokesperson said that “only Fifa could be criticised for recognising those who want world peace” and “rather than be criticised for endorsing peace in a divided world, Fifa should be recognised for what it is – a global governing body that wants to make the future a brighter place”.
