LON­DON–A glob­al sports or­gan­i­sa­tion pum­meled by a cor­rup­tion scan­dal.The pres­i­dent un­der pres­sure to re­sign. The US Jus­tice De­part­ment and FBI lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Spon­sors clam­our­ing for re­form.

FI­FA in 2015?

This was the cri­sis fac­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee in the late 1990s. The IOC, how­ev­er, man­aged to move quick­ly to clean it­self up and en­act re­forms that helped re­store cred­i­bil­i­ty and con­fi­dence in the Olympic body.Now, the IOC is be­ing held as a mod­el for FI­FA to fol­low as its tries to dig it­self out of the biggest bribery scan­dal in its 111-year his­to­ry. Ac­cord­ing to the man who helped lead the IOC cleanup, it will be a much more dif­fi­cult chal­lenge for soc­cer's gov­ern­ing body.

"It's a com­plete and ut­ter mess," se­nior IOC mem­ber Dick Pound told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. "It may be too late."Pound, a Cana­di­an lawyer, head­ed the in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the bribery al­le­ga­tions that rocked the IOC to its foun­da­tions. The case, which broke in De­cem­ber 1998, cen­tered on the cash, schol­ar­ships, med­ical care, lav­ish gifts and oth­er favours linked to Salt Lake City's win­ning bid for the 2002 Win­ter Olympics.

The in­duce­ments to­taled about $1 mil­lion–mere peanuts com­pared to the more than $150 mil­lion cit­ed by the Jus­tice De­part­ment in its probe of bribery, rack­e­teer­ing, mon­ey-laun­der­ing and wire fraud at FI­FA over more than two decades.While the scale of the Salt Lake City al­le­ga­tions was much small­er, the cri­sis was ar­guably more se­vere for the IOC. The or­gan­i­sa­tion was held to a high­er stan­dard be­cause of the eth­i­cal val­ues and ideals as­so­ci­at­ed with the Olympics.

Six IOC mem­ber ex­pelled,four re­signed

"It was a lot more crit­i­cal for us," Pound said by tele­phone from Mon­tre­al. "Our ba­sic ex­is­tence was hang­ing in the bal­ance. In the sense of foot­ball, so many peo­ple know it's crooked. It doesn't have the same eth­i­cal plat­form that we did." Pound's in­ves­ti­ga­tion led to the ex­pul­sion of six IOC mem­bers, the res­ig­na­tion of four mem­bers and se­vere warn­ings for sev­er­al oth­ers. Un­like in the FI­FA case, no mem­bers faced crim­i­nal charges.

Un­der em­bat­tled Pres­i­dent Juan An­to­nio Sama­ranch, the IOC brought in out­side ex­perts to help re­shape the or­gan­i­sa­tion. With­in about a year, the IOC ap­proved a 50-point re­form pack­age that in­clud­ed a ban on mem­ber vis­its to bid cities, cre­ation of an in­de­pen­dent ethics com­mit­tee and term lim­its.

"We took it se­ri­ous­ly and did what we had to do," Pound said. "I don't know whether FI­FA is will­ing or even able to do the same sort of thing."While no one con­sid­ers the IOC per­fect or be­yond re­proach, Pound said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is now viewed in a very dif­fer­ent light."Every­body ac­cepts that the old days are way be­hind us and that we op­er­ate on the ba­sis of best prac­tice," he said. "In that re­spect, we're kind of a poster child for a lot of the oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions that re­al­ly need this."

FI­FA faces ma­jor chal­lenge

Does FI­FA have the chance to car­ry out a sim­i­lar turn­around?"The prob­lem with FI­FA is that this has been drag­ging out there for a few years," for­mer IOC mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor Michael Payne told the AP. "It's like a death by a thou­sand cuts, which un­der­mines con­fi­dence."US pros­e­cu­tors brought crim­i­nal charges against Salt Lake bid lead­ers Tom Welch and Dave John­son, but both men were ac­quit­ted by a judge halfway through a fed­er­al tri­al.

In the FI­FA case, the Jus­tice De­part­ment has in­dict­ed 14 peo­ple, in­clud­ing sev­en soc­cer of­fi­cials who were ar­rest­ed in a dawn po­lice raid on a Zurich ho­tel last week. US au­thor­i­ties are al­so look­ing specif­i­cal­ly at Blat­ter, but he has not been for­mal­ly charged.Blat­ter an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion Tues­day, four days af­ter win­ning re-elec­tion to a fifth term. He said he would stay as pres­i­dent un­til a new elec­tion can be held and would work to re­form FI­FA un­til then.

As the IOC scan­dal un­fold­ed, Sama­ranch al­so faced calls to re­sign, but he hung on and the mem­bers ral­lied be­hind him as the man to dri­ve through the re­form process.

"Our con­clu­sion was that you've got a bet­ter chance with him there of get­ting this done than if you chucked him out and got some­body else," Pound said. While Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin and some oth­er politi­cians have crit­i­cised Amer­i­can au­thor­i­ties for lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to FI­FA, Pound said there should be no es­cape from the "long arm of the US"

"Some­times you get a lit­tle an­noyed about the US flex­ing its mus­cles," he said, "but if you didn't have some­thing like that, it would go on and on and on. It's one of these things, if it's wrong, it's wrong."

AP