FIFA

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite correct. The Government’s view is that reform of FIFA is urgently needed, as I said before, but it should not be, and it is not, at the expense of football development across the world. That would suggest that only Sepp Blatter can develop football, and not others; that is clearly not the case. I should also like to highlight the fantastic work that the FA and the Premiership are doing overseas to develop the game at grass-roots level.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, we have not yet heard from the Liberal Democrat Benches, so on this occasion we should hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, earlier this year I made a very modest transfer to my son’s account in New York, using one of the banks mentioned in the US indictment. I had to jump through hoops in order to persuade the bank that this was a legitimate transaction. Can the Minister assure the House that the Serious Fraud Office will conduct a forensic investigation into why vast sums of money were paid to corrupt FIFA officials via the British banking system, without any alarm bells seemingly being sounded in any of the banks concerned?

[The Earl of Courtown]

The noble Baroness is quite right—sometimes, when an individual wants to make a bank transfer between different countries, they do have to jump through hoops. Yes, noble Lords can rest assured that the SFO is taking a keen interest in what is happening. It has not opened a formal criminal investigation, but it continues actively to assess material in its possession.