It seems like a great way to increase your salary: You simply award yourself and a couple of close friends some $80 million in bonuses, then spread the payments out over a few years. That way, if you ever leave the organization, you will have a cushion to rest on. Oh, one more thing, grant yourself a full indemnity and also say your secret agreement can never be abrogated. What's not to love?

This might sound fanciful, but in the world of FIFA as run by Sepp Blatter and his cronies, that is exactly what happened over the past five years or so. As reported in the Guardian, it turned out that  “The spectacular scale of greed at the top of FIFA was revealed on Friday when lawyers said that three high-ranking former officials––Sepp Blatter, Jérôme Valcke and Markus Kattner––had secretly given themselves pay rises and massive World Cup bonuses totalling 79m Swiss francs (£55m).” These bonuses began immediately after the conclusion of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and continued right up to immediately after the first round of arrests of FIFA executives in May, 2015 for bribery, corruption and money-laundering.

Just when you think the FIFA scandal cannot get any more harrowing it does. The Guardian said, “The secret payments are another lurid episode from a Blatter era now synonymous with venality. They come at a time when FIFA’s new president, Gianni Infantino, is scrambling to show his administration marks a fresh start for an organisation mired in scandal from the grubby regime run by his predecessor.”

Yet in addition to these payments, all three men granted themselves employment contract extensions, salary increases, rights to recoupment of legal fees; all done with out any oversight. Indeed their employment agreements made no provisions for any of these extra payments or benefits. So the persons who benefited from these increases were the same persons who negotiated the changes were also the same persons who approved the changes.

Anyone see any conflicts of interest in any of this?

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