International Sport and Leisure (ISL) was a Swiss

sports marketing Sports marketing as a concept has established itself as a branch of marketing over the past few decades, however, a generally accepted definition does not exist. Academicians Kaser and Oelkers (2005, p. 9) define sports marketing as 'using spor ...

company that was closely bound to FIFA.

History

ISL was established by former Adidas boss Horst Dassler, and was associated with FIFA, the

International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...

and the

International Association of Athletics Federations World Athletics, formerly known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation (from 1912 to 2001) and International Association of Athletics Federations (from 2001 to 2019, both abbreviated as the IAAF) is the international governing body fo ...

. It collapsed in 2001 with debts of £153 million. In 2008, following a four-year investigation by prosecutors in the Swiss canton of

Zug , neighboring_municipalities = Cham, Baar, Walchwil, Steinhausen, Unterägeri , twintowns = Fürstenfeld (Austria), Kalesija (Bosnia-Herzegowina) Zug (Standard German: , Alemannic German: ; french: Zoug it, Zugo r ...

, six former ISL executives, including the former chairman Jean Marie Weber, were accused of a series of charges including fraud, embezzlement and the falsification of documents. Court documents released in 2012 show that two FIFA executives, former president

João Havelange Jean-Marie Faustin Godefroid "João" de Havelange (, ; 8 May 1916 – 16 August 2016) was a Brazilian lawyer, businessman, athlete and centenarian who served as the seventh president of FIFA from 1974 to 1998. His tenure as president is the ...

and Ricardo Teixeira, received 41m CHF (£27m) worth of bribes from ISL between 1992 and 2000. Only 3m CHF of these were repaid. In July 2012, the reformed

FIFA Ethics Committee The FIFA Ethics Committee is one of FIFA's three judicial bodies. It is organized in two chambers, the ''Investigatory Chamber'' and the ''Adjudicatory Chamber''. Its duties are regulated by several official documents, most importantly the ''FIF ...

began investigating the illegal payments made by ISL, in addition to evaluating the behaviour of

FIFA president The following is a list of presidents of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the world association football governing body. Presidents Daniel Burley Woolfall, Rodolphe Seeldrayers, and Arthur Drewry died during the ...

Sepp Blatter in the affair. ISL had specialized in buying and selling broadcast rights to FIFA events such as World Cups on contracts worth millions of dollars. The case was closed on 30 April 2014 after an investigation by Garcia, with Hans-Joachim Eckert ruling that bribes had been paid by ISL between 1992 and 2000 to Havelange, Teixeira and

Nicolas Leoz Nicolas or Nicolás may refer to: People Given name * Nicolas (given name) Mononym * Nicolas (footballer, born 1999), Brazilian footballer * Nicolas (footballer, born 2000), Brazilian footballer Surname Nicolas * Dafydd Nicolas (c.1705–1774), ...

, then-president of CONMEBOL. As Havelange (honorary president of FIFA) and Leoz had already resigned from their posts earlier in April 2014, no " superfluous" further action was taken. In contrast, Blatter was exonerated of "criminal or ethical misconduct", but was also described as "clumsy" and it was questioned whether he "knew or should have known over the years before the bankruptcy of ISL that ISL had made bribes to other FIFA officials".

References

Sources

Citations

External links

Article on ISL
– ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' Sports event promotion companies Defunct companies of Switzerland FIFA Sports marketing {{Switzerland-company-stub

History

See also

References

Sources

Citations

External links