When graft is the norm

The tragic and untimely death of Charles Kennedy, former leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, has been vying for headline space in the British media this week with the deserved and none-to-soon fall from grace of Sepp Blatter, head of the Fédération Internationale de Football Associations (Fifa). The personal cross of alcoholism that Mr Kennedy bore seemed only to enhance his reputation as a decent, brave and honest man, who was inspired to take his party not only to the left of the centre of British politics but also to electoral success in the 2005 general election, when it won 62 seats in the House of Commons. By contrast Mr Blatter’s 17 years as head of Fifa were marred by a continuous undercurrent of rumours and allegations about corruption, some touching him personally and all of them besmirching the name of world soccer. In moral terms, Messrs Kennedy and Blatter did not live on the same planet.

People trusted Charles Kennedy. In the case of Fifa, the Blatter years have resulted in a complete breakdown of trust, so that no country bidding to host a future world tournament can have any confidence that its proposals will be considered on their merits. There has been a strong suspicion for some time that, by placing large amounts of money secretly in the right hands, the opportunity to stage a World Cup could be bought. But this is only one aspect of the damage. The culture inside Fifa appeared to normalise bribery to an extent that some people felt that even the result of football matches could not be relied upon. This is an illustration of one way in which bribery and corruption can do untold damage to the degree of trust that any sport, or indeed any human activity, requires as a minimum. It is a poison that spreads its toxins insidiously.

And it costs lives. According to Transparency International (TI), the global failure to meet many of the Millennial Development Goals by 2015 is mainly down to corruption, with huge amounts of development aid being diverted into private bank accounts rather than being spent on the purposes intended, such as providing clean water. Grand corruption at the top among oligarchical elites often leads to dysfunctional government with petty corruption at the bottom, where unpaid policemen, for instance, start to demand small payments in exchange for favours. In such countries, paying to “buy” a World Cup becomes just what is expected.

The Catholic Church’s record here is not good, and the issue needs higher priority. Corruption in the Vatican appears to have cost Pope Benedict XVI the papacy, when he was faced with overwhelming evidence that the problem was too big for him to deal with. The cleaning up of Vatican finances under his successor has helped to restore trust, but the Church needs to go on the offensive. It has great influence in some of the world’s most corrupt capitals. Corruption is the great enemy of justice, social, criminal and civil. It is the great ally of poverty and crime. To oppose it requires transparently honest moral and political leadership, and a set of unshakeable values to match.