{"id":4043,"date":"2014-06-13T23:09:15","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T23:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=4043"},"modified":"2014-06-13T23:13:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T23:13:00","slug":"the-world-cup-and-being-run-by-a-bunch-of-immoral-crooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2014\/06\/13\/the-world-cup-and-being-run-by-a-bunch-of-immoral-crooks\/","title":{"rendered":"The World Cup, and being run by a bunch of immoral crooks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I am more than a little skeptical about the World Cup in Brazil.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This video is cracking (John Oliver is doing such a good job in that slot):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"FIFA and the World Cup: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DlJEt2KU33I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">What gets me is that FIFA, a non-profit organisation, is sitting on $1 billion. In a world of environmental destruction, global food issues, poverty, biodiversity collapse and whatnot, they can sit there and do what they do is extraordinary.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The corruption is so blatant as to be incredible. .That Qatar could win the 2022 bid is amazing. Only corruption fits the explanatory vacuum for that one.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And how much tax will FIFA pay? Er, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/10091277\">not a lot&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Any host country requires a comprehensive tax exemption to be given to Fifa and further parties involved in the hosting and staging of an event,&#8221; said a Fifa spokesman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Other parties being sponsors? Of FIFA entities? Either way&#8230; It&#8217;s a tax <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxjustice.net\/2014\/05\/31\/brazilians-will-pay-heavily-fifa-tax-abuses\/\">catastrophe<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Four years ago\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/taxjustice.blogspot.de\/2010\/11\/offshore-fifa-making-governments-crawl.html\">we wrote about<\/a>\u00a0FIFA\u2019s so-called African \u201ctax bubble\u201d where FIFA was forcing a poor African country to forego its potential football tax revenues in order to funnel yet more money into FIFA\u2019s gilded Z\u00fcrich headquarters and its lucrative empire. \u00a0We quoted Professor Han Kogels of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, who said:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThey want to create their own tax haven. A fully exempt situation. That is, FIFA and its FIFA subsidiaries that are fully exempt from any tax whatsoever levied at every level \u2013 state level, municipal level. All sorts of taxes: consumption taxes, income taxes \u2013 you name it \u2013 it\u2019s all exempt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Christian Aid have a serious <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxjustice.net\/2014\/05\/31\/brazilians-will-pay-heavily-fifa-tax-abuses\/\">point<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">FIFA must end its \u2018obscene\u2019 insistence on World Cup host countries giving tax breaks worth hundreds of millions to the event\u2019s corporate sponsors, a new campaign is urging.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Brazil will lose up to \u00a3312 million in foregone revenue to World Cup sponsors including McDonalds, Budweiser and Johnson &amp; Johnson, according to the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasjugadasdelafifa.inspiraction.org\/en#top\">campaign<\/a>\u00a0by InspirAction, Christian Aid\u2019s Spanish organisation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u2018The price of these tax breaks for corporate giants will be paid by people living in poverty in Brazil and that is obscene,\u2019 said Isabel Ortigosa of InspirAction.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u2018Brazil is already one of the most unequal countries in the world. The millions that FIFA demands for its sponsors should be used for the benefit of Brazil\u2019s many poor communities, not to enrich the already powerful.\u2019<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">InspirAction has launched a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasjugadasdelafifa.inspiraction.org\/en#firma-ahora\">petition<\/a>\u00a0calling on FIFA President Sep Blatter to \u2018give tax breaks for the World Cup sponsors the red card \u2013 and never impose these rules on World Cup host countries in the future.\u2019<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ms Ortigosa added: \u2018The most conservative estimates suggest that Brazil\u2019s Internal Revenue Service will lose about \u00a3145 million to tax breaks for World Cup sponsors, although some estimates suggest the loss could reach \u00a3312 million.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u2018This is money that should be used to help Brazil\u2019s millions of poor families, for instance with better schools, hospitals and public transport,\u00a0 financial support for all communities affected by infrastructure projects and also through a fairer tax system.\u2019<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Inequality in Brazil is so severe that the top 20 per cent of people get almost 60 per cent of all income, while the bottom 20 per cent (around 40 million people) get just 3 per cent, according to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/data.worldbank.org\/indicator\/SI.DST.FRST.20\/countries\">World Bank figures.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Land ownership is also sharply unequal, with almost one third of all farmland held by fewer than one per cent of rural landowners, according to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianaid.org.uk\/images\/Real-brazil-inequality-behind-statistics-May-2012.pdf\">research published by Christian Aid<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Parts of Brazil\u2019s tax system exacerbate inequality, by imposing sometimes impossible burdens on poor people.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While FIFA sponsors do not pay tax, 10 Afro Brazilian quilombola communities &#8211;\u00a0 formed by runaway slaves \u2013 in the Amazonian state of Par\u00e1 face a land tax bill of \u00a34 million, which they have no hope of paying.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Lawyer Carolina Bellinger of the Pro Indio Commission, a Christian Aid partner organisation which is helping the communities fight the unjust demand, says the case means \u2018huge insecurity for 1,000 families in this region and could affect more than 8,500 others in northern Par\u00e1.\u2019<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mara Luz, Deputy Head of Christian Aid in Latin America and the Caribbean, said: \u2019Fans travelling to support their country in the World Cup will not get a chance to see the real Brazil and how quilombola families are suffering because of this unfair tax system. Instead, it will be a bland corporate version of the country.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And of course the vote scandal&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am more than a little skeptical about the World Cup in Brazil.<\/p>\n<p>This video is cracking (John Oliver is doing such a good job in that slot):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1054,14,23,24],"tags":[871,1343,1344,1749,1342],"class_list":["post-4043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-morality","category-skepticism","category-sport","tag-brazil","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sport","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4043"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4045,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043\/revisions\/4045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}