South Korea’s Chung Mong-joon has said he is facing a 15-year suspension by Fifa’s Ethics Committee, hampering his campaign for the Fifa presidency, but he has denied any wrongdoing and vowed to continue with his bid to lead football’s world governing body.



Speaking at a news conference in Seoul on Tuesday, Chung read out a nine-page statement, addressing the accusations against him, which he dismissed as a ploy “to prevent me from running for the president of Fifa”.

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Chung said the charges against him stemmed from his “support” for South Korea’s 2022 World Cup bid when he proposed the launch of a Global Football Fund. Chung said his proposals were in line with Fifa’s rules and had already been investigated and cleared but he was being targeted because he was running for the Fifa presidency.

“The fundamental reason why I am being targeted is that I aimed straight at the existing power structure of Fifa,” Chung said. The scion of Korea’s Hyundai industrial conglomerate, Chung vowed to fight the charges, adding “ultimately, I will prevail and will be vindicated.“

In November, Chung was named in Fifa’s ethics report into the bidding process for the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, in which South Korea made a bid to host. The report followed an investigation led by US lawyer Michael Garcia and looked into letters that Chung sent, in late 2010, to Fifa executive committee members about a proposal to establish a “Global Football Fund” for football development.

“According to those letters, Korea intended to raise $777m from 2011 to build new football infrastructure and renovate existing facilities,” said the report, which added that the fund was linked to South Korea’s 2022 bid.

Chung, a 63-year-old billionaire who previously served as a Fifa vice-president, formally announced in August that he was running for the Fifa presidency. The incumbent, Sepp Blatter, is to stand down in February. Chung has been heavily critical of Blatter, who has run Fifa for the past 17 years and recently become the focus of a criminal investigation. Blatter has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes.

Chung said at the outset of his campaign that he feared Blatter would sabotage his bid, describing the Ethics Committee as Blatter’s “hitman”. “The true danger is that they are not only sabotaging my candidacy. They are sabotaging Fifa’s election and Fifa itself,” Chung said. “As preposterous as it may sound, there are media reports that Mr Blatter plans to stay on as president once all the presidential candidates are forced out. However, the election is in danger of being turned into a farce.”

He also revealed details about a meeting with England 2018’s former bid leader and Fifa vice-president Geoff Thompson, Prince William and Prime Minister David Cameron.

The statement adds: “The Investigatory Chamber (IC) initially thought that they had a strong case against me. One of the questions that the IC sent me on February 13, 2015 was the following: ’Would it surprise you to learn that the Chairman of England 2018, Mr Geoff Thompson has admitted to agreeing to trade your vote for Korea 2022, in exchange for England’s vote for Korea 2022?’

“This allegedly happened when I last met Mr Geoff Thompson when together we paid a courtesy visit on Prince William at the Prince’s request in his suite at Baur au Lac Hotel in Zurich on December 1, 2010, one day before the vote. When I went to the Prince’s suite, Prime Minister Cameron was also there.”

Chung said he was sent a transcript of Thompson’s “rather incoherent interview” with ethics investigator Michael Garcia.

He added: “In the transcript, Mr Thompson does not even remember whether Prince William was present when he and I and PM Cameron were allegedly making this deal.

“My question is, ’Is it even conceivable that Mr Thompson and I would be making an illicit ’vote trading’ deal in such company? Is Fifa accusing Prince William and the Prime Minister of Great Britain of being complicit in vote trading the day before the vote? If so, they should be investigating the Prince and PM Cameron as well.”

Chung said the vote-trading charge was then dropped and that it only came about as a result of Thompson needing “someone to blame” after the “major embarrassment” of only securing one vote.

He also questioned why Fifa’s ethics committee had not taken action against Blatter over the ISL bribery case – where he did not investigate bribes being paid to senior officials – or secretary general Valcke, who was said in a US court to have lied repeatedly to card giants Mastercard in order to secure a sponsorship deal with Visa.

Chung added: “If the ethics committee was truly independent, it should have banned Mr Blatter for life for the ISL case 20 years ago. Both Mr Blatter and Mr Valcke should have been banned for life for their manipulation of the Visa-MasterCard case.”