7 News Belize

Belize Backed Blatter Right Up To The End
posted (June 2, 2015)
Last night, we showed you our interview with the President of the Football Federation of Belize, Ruperto Vicente, about his experience in Zurich, Switzerland last week when the Swiss authorities descended on the FIFA congress and arrested 14 senior officials in connection with the biggest corruption scandal in FIFA's history.

He also confirmed yesterday that FFB voted for incumbent president, Joseph Sepp Blatter - who was returned for a fifth term as president. That's the man who has presided over a period that American law enforcement alleges that the organization was involved in racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering to rig the voting process for different countries to win the bids to host the World Cup.

Well today, Sepp Blatter shocked the football world when he announced that he would resign from the post he was only just elected to, in the wake of the corruption scandal which rages on all over the football world. This morning, he announced it at a press conference in Switzerland; here's a short excerpt:

So, now all the member countries to plan an extraordinary congress to elect Blatter's replacement - who will probably not be named until the end of this year. How will that change in leadership affect football in Belize? That's yet to be seen, but yesterday, the FFB president revealed why he voted for Blatter last week on behalf of Belize. For context, we revisit an excerpt of that interview:

Daniel Ortiz
"Did Belize vote for Joseph Sepp Blatter or which candidate did we vote for?"

Ruperto Vicente - President, FFB
"Well I voted for Joseph Blatter. Reason being is that he was up for development and Belize needs as much assistance in development as possible and so we also put the challenge that it is now his responsibility to clean up the situation in FIFA."

Daniel Ortiz
"It has widely been speculated that persons just under Mister Blatter have been indicted. Why exactly is he not under question, not being asked to answer certain questions when there is this great perception that whether it is unfair or not that he may be involved in that world wide corruption practices?"

Ruperto Vicente - President, FFB
"Remember that it is CONCACAF officials that are under criminal investigation at this point. The Swiss authorities have just started their probing into activities in FIFA. So I cannot comment on those activities because I do not have the facts on those. FIFA is a good organization as well as CONCACAF. There's nothing wrong with those organizations. You know, what is wrong are individuals who have their own agendas, their own interest and creating the difficulties for the organization."

Blatter was first elected in 1998, and he has served as the highest official in the football world for 17 years. There has been no word yet on when this extraordinary congress will be held to elect Blatter's replacement.

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