ZURICH – Fifa President Sepp Blatter defended his role in a World Cup kickbacks scandal on Thursday, after his former boss Joao Havelange was formally identified for taking millions of dollars in payments from marketing deals.Fifa published a Swiss prosecutor’s report on Wednesday confirming that Havelange accepted kickbacks in the 1990s during Blatter’s 17-year stint serving him as Fifa’s top administrator.Asked if he knew Havelange took kickbacks from disgraced marketing agency ISL, Blatter said “commission” payments were legal in Switzerland in the 1990s.“I can’t have known about an offense that wasn’t even one,” Blatter said in a question-and-answer sequence conducted by Fifa and published on its website. “Back then, such payments could even be deducted from tax as a business expense. Today, that would be punishable under law.“You can’t judge the past on the basis of today’s standards.”Blatter acknowledged he was the senior Fifa figure identified in the dossier as “P1,” who “would also have known” that a one million Swiss francs payment from ISL to Havelange was mistakenly transferred into a Fifa account.Questions to Blatter failed to address his role in Fifa’s attempts to ensure a criminal probe into possible embezzlement by Havelange and long-time Fifa executive committee member Ricardo Teixeira was dropped.The report revealed that, in 2010, Fifa paid 2.5 million Swiss francs (then $2.77 million) compensation to settle the ISL case only after insisting that proceedings against the two Brazilian officials were dropped.Teixeira, the former son-in-law of Havelange, received at least 12.74 million Swiss francs (now $13 million) from ISL between 1992-97.
