FIFA debacle, Andrew Jennings and Dominican Today

"This week’s Fifa exposé is widely credited to the FBI and the tough US attorney general, Loretta Lynch. That they have brought about this crunch is welcome. It is also humiliating for the Swiss police, who know full well what such global agencies get up to on their turf, and for Britain’s Scotland Yard.

Institutional corruption at Fifa has been public knowledge for a decade.

Credit in this saga should go to the dogged obsession of a single reporter, Andrew Jennings, 71, who has traced Sepp Blatter’s footsteps for more than a decade. Jennings worked for the Sunday Times and BBC’s Panorama. His BBC film about Fifa corruption, The Beautiful Bung, appeared as long ago as 2006.”

Theguardian.com today summarizes Jenning’s seemingly uphill battle to uncover corruption in the soccer world that even reached the Dominican Republic, where he contacted us for information on the Sun Land scandal, one of the key elements in the embezzlement case against Dominican senator Felix Bautista, which likely damaged former president Leonel Fernandez’s political career permanently.

Jennings’ dogged chase of the truth –often dubbed as petty by sordid interests- is what drives journalists around the world to do something that counts, something that conjures hope.

Jorge.pineda@dominicantoday.com

Also read: http://dominicantoday.com/dr/local/2009/3/23/31476/Cold-comfort-for-Ukraine