News 27 October 2015

PTG2015: Bonita Mersiades on FIFA corruption and media hacks

The Sports Integrity Initiative spoke to Bonita Mersiades, a former Football Federation Australia (FFA) employee who was sacked, told she would never work in Australia again and faced computer hacks after exposing payments made by Australia’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup to football’s confederation heads. In this exclusive interview, she explains how Australia’s 2022 bid committee set aside A$5 million for the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), A$4 million for the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) and between A$4 million and A$8 million for Africa.

She also explains how websites she owned and her personal laptop were targeted by spam attacks traced back to Zurich, which are now being formally investigated in Australia. Mersiades said that the attacks took down a multi-national web hosting company for four days. As a result, on Day One of Play The Game in Aarhus, Denmark, Mersiades called for better protection for sporting whistleblowers, after speaking about the “brown paper bag money” set aside by Australia’s 2022 bid committee.

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