Inas Mazhar asks whether the FIFA supremo is on the right track after unveiling a plan which he hopes will make world football's governing body more transparent FIFA President Sepp has announced his long-awaited anti-corruption plan including a pledge to re-open the case into the collapse of former marketing partner International Sport and Leisure (ISL). , re-elected for a fourth term in June which he says will be his last, also announced the creation of a new "good governance committee", featuring figures from outside FIFA, and three task forces. The committee would include representatives of clubs, leagues, players, referees and women's football, among others. One task force would look into changes to the FIFA statutes, a second would look at changes to the ethics committee and a third would be responsible for introducing changes to make FIFA more transparent. These would be added to an existing task force aimed at making the sport itself more attractive in time for the 2014 World Cup. All proposals were passed by the executive committee on Friday and said he wanted concrete results by the time of the FIFA Congress in June 2013. continued: "I think we have been rather ambitious in our road map, its a Formula One model, but we need to move forward. "We have established a road map with key stages," said. Regarding the ISL case, he said: "This is an issue which has been raised by the national associations and members of FIFA, the executive committee of FIFA has decided that this case should be opened. "We will give this file therefore to an independent organisation on the outside of FIFA so they can delve into this file and present them to us, that is all I can tell you on this famous ISL file," he said. FIFA added in a statement: "However, this can only be done after a thorough legal analysis because of the complexity of the matter." The case will be opened at the next meeting of the executive committee in December 2011. ISL went bankrupt in 2001. ??According to Chairman of the Association International de Presse Sportive (AIPS) Football Commission Keir Radnedge, "It seems that FIFA's challenge is to keep the media in the minutiae of the work of four new ad hoc panels -- "task force" is the beloved buzz description -- to prevent the world outside from thinking that all the well-aired naughtiness has been swept under a committee-room carpet." Radnedge was writing in the AIPS website. Radnedge also said that that task will last for anything up to two years "which, coincidentally, should give any dodgy dealer all the time he needs to make a graceful exit from the upper echelons of world football. "In the middle of it all is also the promise of an imminent reopening of the ISL dossier though some of the other parties involved in sealing the papers in May 2009 may yet have something to say about that." The ISL has been the main sponsor of FIFA since the late nineties. Radnedge continues in his article, "Transparency International, which took a consultancy role in creating 's reform proposals which were adopted unanimously last Friday by the exco, welcomed them as a first step in what was always bound to be a lengthy process. "In essence the reform proposals involve creating three task forces to oversee a revision of the FIFA statutes, a strengthening of the Ethics Committee and a system for transparency and compliance. Their work will be fed into a good governance committee to be composed of between 15 and 18 members from inside and outside the 'football family.' "These bodies would build on the proposals approved by Congress last June and will take up to two years to implement. "In question-and-answers after a lengthy statement, denied that all of FIFA was corrupt just because some people "are not angels," denied that he had considered resigning especially since Congress had elected him to oversee reform, and said that he was "very happy that the executive committee is completely in step with what we want to achieve." Following 's re-election in June at the FIFA Congress in Zurich, he addressed three significant changes in the system: that a World Cup should be chosen by Congress from a shortlist drawn up by the exco, for a strengthening of the Ethics Committee through its division into investigative and judicial sections as well as the election of its members by Congress, and the creation of a corporate governance and compliance committee. noted then that a task force to review football, "the actual game itself," had already been created and had started work. That committee is headed by German football legend Franz Beckenbaur. Radnedge sees that the latest proposals had been constructed with the co-operation of Transparency International which, said , was "a cooperation which is continuing and which, I hope, will continue long into the future." signalled that the establishment of the good governance committee was a direct response to a demand for reforming action expressed recently by the 53 national associations of UEFA. The national associations would, he said, make up the task force for transparency and compliance to "identify the problems with which the national associations are faced with respect to FIFA." It would have a joint presidency held by New Zealand's Frank Van Hattum and Paraguay's Juan Angel Napout. The statutes revision work will be led by Theo Zwanziger, a new member of the executive committee who is the German federation president. Zwanziger is a declared sceptic about the law-making international board in its present form which includes a four-man representation of the four British home associations. The good governance committee would be composed in essence of all those parties not directly represented in the exco as clubs, players, referees, leagues, women's football, supporters, television, marketing partners as well as representatives from politics, the law and the public at large. Additional news from wire services
