Outgoing president Sepp Blatter has criticised FIFA presidential hopeful, Chung Mong-Joon, regarding comments the South Korean made about football’s governing body.
Chung, a former FIFA vice-president, officially announced his bid for the presidency in Paris on Monday and said FIFA was a “corrupt organisation”.
“It is disturbing, to say the least, to hear Dr Chung Mong-Joon describe FIFA as ‘a corrupt organization’,” Blatter said in a statement released by FIFA.
“Even more so when one recalls – and as Dr Chung cannot have forgotten – that he was a FIFA vice-president and a FIFA emergency committee member for 17 years from 1994 up until 2011.
“Regarding personal attacks made by Dr Chung at the same event, I will not comment further than to say that this is particularly disrespectful to all concerned.”
During his speech, Chung also highlighted the leadership at FIFA and said the association “is undergoing a profound crisis”.
“Under these circumstances, the new FIFA president should be a crisis manager and a reformer. He must be more than just a head of the technical department,” Chung said.
“The core issue of the coming election is whether the 40-year-old system of corruption should continue or not. Organisations begin to corrupt, and the leader thinks he is indispensable.”
“The problem at FIFA is that those mired in corruption, the only thing they are interested in is hiding the corruption.
“The real reason FIFA has become such a corrupt organization is because the same person has been running it for 40 years. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Meanwhile, Chung has been forced to defend himself against charges of corruption after it was reported that Fifa was investigating him over the ‘disaster relief’ funds made to Haiti and Pakistan in 2010 .
Chung said in a statement he had been donating money to causes at home and abroad since the 1990s.
“Recent media reports allege that FIFA has started an investigation into FIFA Honorary Vice President Dr. Chung Mong-Joon’s 2010 donations to disaster relief funds to Haiti and Pakistan,” said the statement.
“If these reports are true, we condemn this as a cynical and unethical effort by FIFA to misrepresent even charitable donations for political manipulation.”
