Former FA chairman surprised over conflict of interest

Lord Triesman, giving evidence at the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee yesterday, acknowledged he had been unaware Sheffield-based Glue Creative Production Solutions (Glue) had provided promotional materials for the bid.

Lord Triesman was chairman of the World Cup bid as well as the FA itself up until his resignation in May last year. Sir Dave is a vice-chairman of the FA and was on the board of the World Cup bid until he resigned in November 2009.

He was a director of Glue when it provided promotional material for a prestigious launch of the bid at Wembley in May 2009 and for other events connected to the bid. He resigned from the family company – which is owned by his son David – on December 31 last year.

The involvement of Sir Dave’s family company has prompted MPs on the committee, which is currently running an inquiry into football governance, to raise questions over a potential conflict of interest.

Asked what rules the FA had on conflict of interest, Lord Triesman responded: “Where there were questions of potential conflict of interest people were expected to leave the room.

“I would have expected in the case of anything being purchased by the bid to have seen, above a certain value at least, competitive tendering and I would have expected a declaration of interest by anybody whose business was supplying anything to us.”

The select committee has written to both the FA asking for a response to Sir Dave’s business interests, first revealed in the Yorkshire Post last month. The members have also written to the Premier League, where Sir Dave is chairman, which has also provided business to Glue.

The committee also highlighted new allegations that two FIFA executive committee members were paid $1.5m to vote for Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid.

Tory MP Damian Collins said that evidence submitted following a newspaper investigation claimed FIFA vice-president Issa Hayatou from Cameroon and Jacques Anouma from the Ivory Coast were paid by Qatar.

FIFA’s ethics committee last year banned two other executive committee members after an investigation into World Cup bidding.

Mr Collins said the submission claimed Qatar specifically employed a fixer to arrange deals with African members for their votes.

The committee also heard claims that Paraguay’s FIFA member Nicolas Leoz asked for a knighthood while Brazil’s FIFA member Ricardo Terra Teixeira asked Lord Triesman to “come and tell me what you have got for me”.