Football investigated: How foreign players seized control of Australian soccer | Four Corners

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(CROWD CHEERS)
REPORTER: Melbourne City has won its first A-League grand final
with a 3-1 victory over a 10 man Sydney FC in Melbourne.
SEAN NICHOLLS: On Australian soccer's biggest stage,
a brand-new champion was crowned this year.
Melbourne City's inaugural A-League victory was a triumph for loyal fans
but also its big-spending foreign owner, based in Abu Dhabi.
This is a decades-long play to build a global football empire.
They want to be global players in a global economy,
and using football, in this case, is one way that they're doing that.
Australian soccer has long operated
in the shadows of this country's more established football codes,
while tens of millions of dollars have poured into the local game
from offshore.
There's been zero media scrutiny... (LAUGHS)
..of the involvement of most of the people involved in our game.
And I think that's the way they like it.
If people don't ask questions, they don't need to give answers.
It's as simple as that.
In the stadiums, fans focus on the exploits of their teams,
not their wealthy owners.
NICHOLAS MCGEEHAN: Do you really want to be run
by a government that's committing war crimes
and part of its purpose of owning the club
is to deflect attention
from those war crimes and other human rights abuses?
You know, I would argue no.
Clubs should be run
in the interest of their supporters and their communities,
not in the political interest of foreign governments.
No-one in Australia had really raised the question
of whether we wanted a sporting club in Australia
to be owned by a conglomerate in a country that was a little bit shady.
Football clubs have been used internationally
for money laundering, for organised criminals to get involved.
And, from a law-enforcement perspective,
that's something we would never want to see here in Australia.
More than its domestic rivals,
like AFL or rugby league,
soccer is a truly global game,
and with that has come significant levels of foreign investment.
Tonight on Four Corners we look beyond what happens on the field
to investigate the cashed-up powerbrokers
behind some of Australia's biggest teams.
(TRAFFIC DRONES)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
On a Sunday afternoon in late June,
thousands of Australian soccer fans converged on a Melbourne stadium
for the code's biggest match of the year.
Hey! Hey!
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
The Grand Final clash featured two of the league's biggest names -
Sydney FC and Melbourne City.
FANS: (SING) # Everywhere we go!
# It's City boys making all the noise!
# Everywhere we go!
# Everywhere we go!
# Everywhere we go!
# It's City boys making all the noise! #
(INDISTINCT CHATTER, LAUGHTER)
With a home-ground advantage
and the chance to win their first championship,
Melbourne City fans were pumped-up and out in force.
Keep coming, everyone! Get down!
Everyone, get down!
Grand final day! Oi! Oi!
Let's go! Alright...
Oi! We're going to go nice and slow
and then go fucking mental, alright?!
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
ALL: (SING QUIETLY) # Sha-la-la, la-la-la-lah
# Shh, shh
# Oh, Melbourne boys
# Shh, shh
(BUILDING) # Sha-la-la, la-la-la-lah (CLAPPING)
# Oh, Melbourne boys
# Let's go!
(LOUDLY) # Sha-la-la, la-la-la-lah!
# Oh, Melbourne boys! #
Come on!
# Sha-la-la, la-la-la-lah! #
Come on!
# Oh, Melbourne boys! # Let's go!
HARRISON VERCOE: The lead-up was tense
because we were missing a lot of our key players
with being on Socceroos duty,
and, so, I was nervous, you know, coming into the Grand Final.
Sydney's been the team to beat for years.
(WHISTLE BLOWS)
At the final whistle,
Melbourne City was crowned this year's champion
of the men's domestic competition known as the A-League.
(CROWD CHEERS)
As a fan, that's the best thing you can possibly ask for.
I mean, you wait years.
I mean, I've been going to games since I was 15 years old,
and you dream of winning a championship.
(CROWD CHEERS)
ANNOUNCER: Scott Jamieson!
(CROWD CHEERS)
Melbourne City's goal-scoring captain, Scott Jamieson,
was credited with a big role in the win.
But, in his victory speech,
Jamieson was quick to single out a much less recognisable club figure.
Firstly, I'd like to thank Melbourne City owner,
His Highness Sheikh Mansour.
Melbourne City's owner
is the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates,
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan.
He wasn't at the game.
If he was watching at all, it was likely from his home
over 11,000 kilometres away in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.
Sheikh Mansour is...well, he's the Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE.
He's an al Nahyan, which is the ruling family of Abu Dhabi.
So, he's incredibly powerful, on one level.
Sheikh Mansour is also staggeringly rich,
with a personal fortune estimated at more than $20 billion.
Mansour sits at the apex of the royal family that rules Abu Dhabi -
the wealthiest of seven principalities
that form the United Arab Emirates.
He's the brother of the de-facto leader of the United Arab Emirates,
which is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan,
and it's his relationship to him
from where he gathers most of his power.
The Crown Prince is essentially a dictator at this point.
He has assumed a lot of power in Abu Dhabi and United Arab Emirates.
And Mansour is very close to him and is part of the inner circle.
Sheikh Mansour's first foray into the soccer world was in 2008,
when he bought the then mid-tier English Premier League club
Manchester City.
(INAUDIBLE CHATTER)
The Sheikh's purchase of Manchester City polarised fans.
On the one hand, Manchester City fans loved it
because he brought in the money
that allowed them to buy all the players
and the expertise and the transformation of the club
that would buy them success and trophies.
But they didn't know who he was.
None of us had ever heard of Sheikh Mansour.
We didn't know what he was and what he stood for,
whether he was really a football fan -
the scepticism over that, of course,
given that he's only visited once in 13 years of ownership.
Um... So... And then, of course,
there are people questioning his wider motives -
was he in it for the football or was he in it for other things
like, you know, post-oil diversification of a nation's assets
or sportswashing or some other motivation?
Even though Mansour was the Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE,
he was often just represented
in the press and particularly by Manchester City
as just a wealthy benefactor, just another sheikh from the Middle East.
The level of his involvement to the government
and his links to the government
were downplayed and underplayed,
so nobody really talked about anything
other than the fact he had money.
Sheikh Mansour's sports-investment company
is called City Football Group -
a global behemoth recently valued at more than $6 billion.
NICK HARRIS: So, City Football Group has been operational since 2013,
and it began as a parent company, effectively, of Manchester City,
and, quite soon after, New York City FC in New York,
and has now grown at this point in 2021
to be a group of... the umbrella organisation
that owns and has major shareholdings
in 10 different football clubs around the world at this point.
In 2014
Sheikh Mansour's City Football Group
snapped up a struggling Australian A-League club called Melbourne Heart
for about $11 million.
Club supporter Harrison Vercoe
remembers how it divided the fan base.
HARRISON VERCOE: I mean, on one hand,
you've got this huge superpower in world football taking over your club
and you know there's gonna be a cash injection.
And automatically when you hear 'cash injection',
you think that's gonna equate to success straightaway.
And, on the other hand,
you're seeing this club that you've grown up following
and supporting week in and week out
be stripped of its identity,
and that's hard as a fan.
You know, we lost our colours, we lost our name, we lost the badge.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Melbourne Heart was renamed Melbourne City
and its colours were changed from red and white to light blue.
Why would City Football Group,
which owns huge teams like Manchester City,
be interested in buying a much smaller team
in a much smaller market like Melbourne City?
One of the reasons would be around identifying young talent,
both men and women.
And because they have a network around the world
in which they can move those players,
it allows them to identify young talent,
sell them onto other clubs
and further their development
as well as realise some commercial gain.
The team also became a part
of what critics say is a slick propaganda machine
designed to burnish the UAE's international image.
(CROWD CHEERS)
(SOARING MUSIC PLAYS)
Melbourne City is one of several City Football teams
being used by the UAE to promote next month's world expo in Dubai.
SAM KLINTWORTH: The UAE seeks to promote their brand
as one of glamour, one of positivity, one of wealth
and certainly one of being very globally connected.
The reality, in our view,
is that much of that actually diverts and distracts
from the significant and concerning human-rights abuses
that are happening in the UAE on a daily basis.
Amnesty International has consistently criticised
the United Arab Emirates' record on human rights.
Amnesty have many concerns
around human-rights violations occurring in the UAE.
Some of those include the silencing and imprisonment
of those speaking out in opposition to the ruling family.
Certainly, the rights of women are a concern for us,
the rights of same-sex couples.
And there are disturbing human-rights violations
against...within the kafala,
which is the system of sponsorship for migrant workers.
If a picture speaks a thousand words,
then the video you're about to see,
uncovered in an exclusive Nightline investigation,
tells a long and dark story -
a member of a royal family abusing his power
in a violent and despicable way.
(GUNSHOTS)
(MAN WHIMPERS)
Sheikh Mansour's family
has been implicated in shocking human-rights abuses.
(GUNSHOTS)
A video leaked to the US media
showed his brother Sheikh Issa
torturing a merchant in the desert
over a business dispute involving $5,000 worth of grain.
FOOTAGE JOURNALIST: With the help of a man in a police uniform,
the victim has his legs tied
and then is forced to the ground,
held down by the officer
as sand is shoved into the victim's mouth
by what the UAE government now acknowledges to ABC News
is one of the country's 22 royal sheikhs...
(MAN SCREAMS)
..Sheikh Issa, the brother of the Crown Prince.
After using a cattle prod on his victim,
there's this gruesome scene -
the sheikh points to a board with a nail protruding
and then begins to beat him again and again.
The tape ends with what appears to be attempted murder.
The victim is left semi-conscious
as Sheikh Issa drives over him, back and forth,
with his Mercedes SUV.
After the tape emerged, Sheikh Issa was put on trial.
NICHOLAS MCGEEHAN: Ultimately, a UAE court cleared him of any wrongdoing.
And it became clear for everyone who followed it
that this was a state
that, you know, had members...
(LAUGHS) ..had members of its royal family
who were involved in deeply disturbing acts
and for whom the rule of law simply didn't apply.
Nicholas McGeehan has been researching human-rights abuses
for nearly 20 years.
His work for Human Rights Watch
led to him being blacklisted by the United Arab Emirates.
It's dangerous to rank countries in terms of their human-rights record,
and it's a difficult thing to do
because all states violate human rights to some extent.
But if there was a ranking, the UAE would be somewhere down the bottom.
You know, they have an appalling human-rights record.
PROMO VOICEOVER: In the world's most famous sporting city,
together we laid the foundations...
Human-rights activists believe the UAE uses its ownership of clubs
like Manchester City and Melbourne City
to launder its reputation.
(CROWD CHEERS)
(INAUDIBLE) (SOARING MUSIC PLAYS)
SAM KLINTWORTH: People associate sport with positivity,
with achievement, with prowess and athleticism,
and this can be used in what we call 'sportswashing'.
And sportswashing, essentially,
is taking that positive attribute that's associated with sport
and using it to improve your reputation.
So, essentially, that can be leveraging
off the glamour, the access, the universal appeal of sport
to improve your brand,
and it can also be seen
to disguise or divert away from human-rights violations.
If you're involved in war crimes in Yemen, you know,
if you're disappearing people in Abu Dhabi,
if you're rendering Saudi women's-rights activists
back to Riyadh, where they are tortured,
it helps to have a football club
to put your name in positive terms in the press.
(INDISTINCT ON-FIELD YELLING)
Amnesty International believes City Football Group
shouldn't own an Australian team
due to the UAE's poor human-rights record.
(INDISTINCT ON-FIELD YELLING)
Amnesty International in Australia
is not in support of a City Group investment in Melbourne City.
We feel alarmed and concerned
around the potential for that
to distract from the significant human-rights abuses
occurring in the UAE.
Melbourne City's most senior directors
occupy powerful political posts in the United Arab Emirates.
The club's chairman is Khaldoon Al Mubarak,
a senior adviser to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
Its vice-chairman is English-born PR consultant Simon Pearce.
Based in Sydney, he's also a special adviser to the Abu Dhabi government.
Pearce is hugely significant in Abu Dhabi, for a start.
He's been there for, I think, at least 2006.
He was previously... He was a PR executive at Burson-Marsteller,
went to work for the Abu Dhabi Executive Affairs Authority.
Has been instrumental in government policy there for a long time,
principally communications, though - that's his key role.
I think probably the simplest way to think of him
is he's the minister of propaganda for the United Arab Emirates.
It's not possible to separate
Simon Pearce's role as adviser,
key adviser to the most important political figures in the UAE
and his figure within City Football Group
because they are obviously linked, they go hand-in-hand.
The football, CFG, the football entity,
are part of the public face of the UAE.
So, yes, it's a very... You can't separate the roles.
It's a very important role.
It's the most public thing that the UAE do that's positive.
Simon Pearce is one of the most powerful figures
in Australian and international soccer.
There is no person that works harder,
there is no person in football that is...has got more integrity.
He has been an enormous benefit
to the game here.
Look, Simon is also a director of all the City Football Group clubs,
so his influence in the world game is very significant
and his ability to bring different views to the table
was, quite frankly, outstanding.
In 2019 Simon Pearce was embroiled in an international scandal
when Manchester City was investigated
by European soccer's governing body, UEFA,
over rorting its club-funding rules, known as Financial Fair Play.
Financial Fair Play was set up by UEFA
to stop financial doping, to keep clubs sustainable.
So, basically saying, "You can't come in
"and artificially pump money into football clubs
"and buy success that way
"because that will lead to boom and bust
"and clubs going out of business."
ARCHIVE REPORTER: The Premier League champions
are under investigation by UEFA
after documents were leaked
apparently showing they'd used sponsorship deals
to get around the regulations.
(INDISTINCT ON-FIELD YELLING)
The principal allegation against Manchester City
was that they had been receiving
enormous amounts of disguised investment.
In other words, that their sponsorship deals
with entities like Etihad Airways
were not, in fact, being funded by Etihad
but by other entities in the UAE.
A leaked email to Simon Pearce
referred to £67.5 million owing to Manchester City
from its sponsor, Etihad Airways.
The email suggested only £8 million of that
was to be funded directly by Etihad,
while the rest - £59.5 million -
was to be secretly paid by Sheikh Mansour's company,
the Abu Dhabi United Group.
The accusation was that the state had reimbursed these entities,
so they were effectively putting money in themselves
and hiding this as sponsorship money.
UEFA launched an investigation.
ARCHIVE REPORTER: We are waiting for news
of any possible punishments.
City refused to cooperate, in effect.
They just point-blank refused.
City Football Group treated UEFA's investigation with utter disdain.
ARCHIVE PRESENTER: We have huge breaking news here.
Manchester City are to be punished
for breaking financial rules in football
and they have been banned from all UEFA competition
for the two seasons after this one.
UEFA banned Manchester City from its competition for two years
and fined it 30 million euros.
Manchester City appealed and had the ban overturned
because a court found there was insufficient evidence.
Simon Pearce was cleared of wrongdoing,
but the court fined Manchester City 10 million euros
for not cooperating with UEFA's original investigation.
A 10-million-euro fine for not cooperating
is quite a statement.
It's in the top-five fines ever handed out in the world
in relation to football wrongdoing.
Foreign money has flowed into Australian soccer
since the inception of the A-League competition 16 years ago.
Today, five of the 12 teams are foreign-owned or -controlled.
But, all too often, the financing behind the clubs has been obscured
because there's no requirement to publicly disclose it.
I think, generally speaking in football around the world...
(LAUGHS) ..there's a greater need for transparency and accountability.
We don't have the same level of insight
into the ownership of the clubs
that they do in other countries.
And it's a basic tenet of good governance
that we have some transparency and accountability around ownership,
both foreign-owned and Australian-owned.
Bonita Mersiades is a former corporate-affairs executive
with soccer's regulatory body, Football Australia.
She blew the whistle on alleged corruption
in the 2022 soccer World Cup bidding process,
and has been pressing for more transparency in the game ever since.
They're private entities operating in a sport,
and sport has a level of transparency and accountability.
We demand a level of transparency and accountability from sport
because it is something that we all engage with
and it is something that we should be aware of who are the owners,
how they're financed, how they're structured
and why they're here and what they're getting out of it.
ARCHIVE REPORTER: City trailed in the first half
but were deserved winners,
ending Sydney's dream of an historic third consecutive title.
The team Melbourne City beat in this year's Grand Final
is also foreign-owned.
Sydney FC has become one of the A-League's dominant clubs.
Its owner is a Russian tycoon,
David Traktovenko,
who's worth an estimated $250 million.
ROBERT HORVATH: David Traktovenko
is a Russian businessman
with multiple business interests.
He's a well-known developer
and he's also known as the owner of the Sydney Football Club.
David Traktovenko made his fortune in St Petersburg in the 1990s
when he was a large shareholder in a commercial bank called Promstroybank.
Among its powerful shareholders was future president Vladimir Putin,
who also held an account there.
Traktovenko's business partner was Vladimir Kogan,
who was nicknamed 'Putin's banker'.
Kogan reportedly bragged about using the KGB to protect the bank
at a time when predatory organised-crime gangs
were flourishing in St Petersburg.
It seems pretty clear
that the protection that Promstroybank found
was with the state-security structures,
with the structures of the former KGB.
Kogan was famous for declaring
that the best protection - the best 'roof', in Russian argot -
was the KGB.
In 2005
Traktovenko bought 15% of Sydney FC,
later increasing it to a controlling stake.
Traktovenko got involved in buying Sydney FC
because he has a daughter who lives in Sydney.
She is married to an Australian.
He has Australian grandchildren.
And he already has an interest in football,
so when Sydney FC was being formed
and there was an opportunity to invest in it, he did so.
It's fair to say
that, since he has been the majority shareholder of Sydney FC,
Sydney FC has lived up to its big-name-brand reputation
as being one of the best and biggest clubs in Australia.
They've invested in facilities and infrastructure
and they've had enormous success on and off the field.
David's a charming person.
Used to own Zenit Saint Petersburg in Russia,
which is a team that competed
at the highest level of the European Champions League.
He comes to the matches,
his daughter Alina is married to Scott Barlow, the chairman,
they have assimilated brilliantly into Australian society,
very decent people,
and the fact he has invested so far in this game over $50 million
and has produced an extraordinarily successful football club
in the Australian system.
And, I think, if people have an issue with him,
they've had, I think, you know,
probably 10 or 12 years to have raised that with him.
And no-one has, as I've seen it.
(INDISTINCT ON-FIELD YELLING)
Adelaide lawyer Greg Griffin
knows the challenges of owning an Australian soccer club.
For seven years he co-owned Adelaide United with a local businessman.
(INDISTINCT ON-FIELD YELLING)
Unless you have a very wealthy owner
who is prepared to, basically, fund losses,
most of the Australian clubs have found it very difficult
and many have fallen by the wayside.
In 2018
Griffin and his partner sold Adelaide United
to a consortium of Dutch investors.
The new owners insisted on remaining anonymous.
The only person that I knew in the consortium, or the front person,
was Piet van der Pol,
who had been a player agent for one of our players.
So, I'd met him once or twice,
and, basically, he said he represented a...
He's Dutch, resident in China,
and he said he represented a consortium out of Holland.
And that's as much information as we were ever given.
It's clearly not ideal,
and I think it's probably unheard of in most European leagues,
where ownerships are very transparent.
Even today, the Dutch investors who own Adelaide United
refuse to disclose their identities.
I think any entity wanting to come into the A-League
should disclose precisely who they are and what they are.
I have... I think the...
The fans of each individual club are entitled to know that.
So, look, it's... I simply don't know why the situation has arisen
and why the Dutch consortium are so...
..loathe to have themselves disclosed,
their identities disclosed.
But, if they're not obliged to,
they don't have to under the current rules,
so they've done nothing wrong.
Exactly how much money foreign owners have poured into the game
isn't publicly available.
Most Australian soccer clubs are run as private companies
that are not required to publish financial statements.
Why does it matter where money comes from?
It matters because
in sport, as in life, transparency and accountability matter,
and, therefore, if we hold those things to be important,
they are important in sport.
It's a very small market here in Australia,
so if you can attract foreign investment,
that can potentially be a great thing
because it opens a whole pool of money
that you wouldn't otherwise have access to.
But that also means
that there's a level of opaqueness or lack of transparency
so that we can't necessarily see
who those international conglomerates or investors are.
Sports integrity researcher Catherine Ordway
believes more transparency is vital to ensure the game remains clean.
From an integrity perspective it's concerning
because we have seen a number of international reports
that have said that football clubs have been used internationally
for money laundering, for organised criminals to get involved.
And, from a law-enforcement perspective,
that's something we would never want to see here in Australia.
(CROWD CHEERS)
ARCHIVE REPORTER: The Roar found their mojo
and scored through substitute Alex Parsons in the first 10 minutes.
(CROWD CHEERS)
Brisbane Roar is a powerhouse of the A-League
with three championships to its name.
But in 2011 it was in financial dire straits.
Its saviour was one of Indonesia's largest corporations -
the Bakrie Group.
ARCHIVE REPORTER: The Bakrie Group from Indonesia
has strong interests in mining, banking and agriculture.
It now has controlling interests in football clubs
in Asia, Europe, South America and Australia.
You know, we don't see this as a one-off.
I think ultimately a blend of...
..Australian ownership and international and foreign ownership
is really good for the league.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
NASYA BAHFEN: I think the approach by the Bakrie Group
would've elicited a sigh of relief in A-League circles -
"Look, we've got a suitor," you know?
It's almost like you've got
a kid who's, like, the black sheep of the family
and nobody wants to, you know, support it.
All of a sudden, here comes this fabulous suitor,
so it's almost like a marriage of convenience, I guess.
Maybe they were a little bit reluctant
to dig too deeply into the background of the Bakrie Group.
CHRIS MCALISTER: I think the reaction amongst the supporter group
was a little bit twofold.
Like, I think there was this initial relief
that, you know, there was going be some money injected
and things might go the way that they should be going
and that the financial support would mean growth and improvement
and things like that.
But, I also think, again there was this kind of slight trepidation
about what being owned...
..you know, having the club fully owned by an overseas entity
might mean.
After making an initial investment in 2011,
the Bakrie Group became the sole owner the following year.
All of the coverage was about how this would be the first time
a professional sporting organisation in Australia
would be owned 100% by a foreign entity.
It was spoken of in incredibly glowing terms
and all of the news was about how this would be good for football,
you know, that they, the Brisbane Roar, would have an academy,
they'd be bankrolled
by, you know, this wealthy Indonesian conglomerate.
Indonesian-born academic Nasya Bahfen
was working as a radio producer at the time.
I followed football heavily.
My background's Indonesian, so I was born in Jakarta.
And I also...
I guess I also kept an eye on the business side of things,
because I did used to be a business reporter in Singapore.
And, so, I thought this might be an interesting story to cover
because no-one in Australia had really raised the question
of whether we wanted a sporting club in Australia
to be owned by a conglomerate
in a country that was a little bit...
..you know, that was a little bit shady.
The Bakrie Family patriarch is Aburizal Bakrie.
Bakrie is a former minister in the Indonesian government
and former chairman of Indonesia's notorious Golkar political party.
Indonesian political parties are uniformly corrupt,
and Golkar is probably the worst of them,
widely seen as the worst of them.
It's the political party of the former authoritarian leader Suharto,
and Suharto himself was ranked
one of the most corrupt leaders in the world
by Transparency International
during his tenure in office.
In 2006
a Bakrie Group company was accused
of causing one of Indonesia's worst ever environmental disasters.
ARCHIVE REPORTER: The mud spill
has displaced more than 10,000 people in East Java.
Environmentalists are blaming oil drilling by Lapindo Brantas,
a company that's majority-owned
by billionaire government minister Aburizal Bakrie.
The eruption of the so-called 'mud volcano'
was blamed on the company drilling nearby.
The Bakrie Group denied responsibility
and was eventually cleared by an Indonesian court.
But it was forced by the government to pay compensation.
So, the Bakrie Group did actually compensate the farmers
whose livelihoods were affected.
The compensation was an absolutely paltry amount.
A lot of them did have to go and look into other sources of income,
you know, to feed those families.
When the Bakrie Group bought Brisbane Roar,
the deal was done by Aburizal Bakrie's younger brother Nirwan.
He's a powerful figure in Indonesian football.
Nirwan was the deputy chairman of the Indonesian football association,
sort of the second-in-command
beneath another prominent member of Golkar, Nurdin Halid,
for an extended period in the 2000s.
And he's had a strong interest,
not only as an administrator within Indonesia's football association,
but also as an individual who runs football clubs, right?
So he has interest in the clubs at the same time.
Company documents show the Bakries own Brisbane Roar
through an Indonesian holding company.
A senior director of that company is a man named Joko Driyono.
Driyono is a former head of the Indonesian football association,
who was jailed in 2019
for tampering with evidence in a police match-fixing inquiry.
In order to crack down
on the rampant match-fixing and corruption
within Indonesian football,
the police assembled a task force, which was an anti-mafia task force,
and Joko Driyono was one of the major scalps
of that anti-mafia task force.
Driyono was jailed for 18 months
after being convicted of directing an associate to remove evidence
during the police investigation.
We've discovered that he is, in fact,
still listed as a senior director
of the holding company that owns the Brisbane Roar.
How surprising is that to you?
Not surprising at all.
I don't think...
I don't think we should assume that legal trouble is any barrier
to political office, to advancement in big business,
to advancement in the Indonesian bureaucracy.
Is this something that Football Australia
should, A - be aware of and, B - be concerned about?
They should certainly be aware of it.
They should be concerned about it.
CROWD: (CHANTS) Brisbane!
Brisbane!
Brisbane!
Brisbane!
Three years into the Bakries' ownership of Brisbane Roar,
the club was in financial crisis and facing legal action.
Players weren't being paid
and the A-League threatened to tear up the Bakrie Group's licence.
(CROWD CHEERS)
The Bakries managed to hold on,
but it damaged their reputation with the fans.
CHRIS MCALISTER: I think,
when you're trying to build the culture
of something like a football club,
that's really damaging,
not just to the people on the inside,
who probably know a lot more than we do on the outside,
but also to the people on the outside.
You know, you're asking us to trust you,
to buy into your kind of membership,
but we don't know whether people are getting paid
or bills are getting paid,
so it's a really fraught thing.
Neither the football clubs nor the governing body
would appear in this program.
In a statement,
Football Australia said it works closely with law-enforcement agencies
to "protect and preserve financial integrity" in the game.
It says it applies a "fit and proper test" to clubs,
which must provide "independently audited financial accounts"
each year.
I think it goes without saying
that there needs to be good governance in football,
and key to that is transparency and accountability.
But that applies whether it's a foreign-owned club
or an Australian-owned club.
And, so, the question we really need to ask is,
"Is there sufficient due diligence?
"Is there sufficient transparency and accountability
"around any club that's coming into the A-League?"
Australian football is entering a new era
that hands the private clubs even more power.
They now have the right to run their competition
after breaking away from the regulator, Football Australia,
last year.
BONITA MERSIADES: The new model is that the A-League clubs
have management and operational control over their competition.
They can make decisions about their competition,
which, of course, impacts the level of their investment
and how they go about doing their business.
The football association
continues to have what is called a 'good-of-game' controlling interest,
and they have...importantly, they have and maintain the stewardship
of community football
and of national teams and player development
and those sorts of things.
The clubs had a very different agenda and a very different idea
of how the A-League had to progress and grow
and did not wish to be
living under the coat-tails of the FFA and the board.
(INDISTINCT ON-FIELD YELLING)
To run the game, the club owners have formed a new private company
called Australian Professional Leagues,
delivering the foreign owners
of Brisbane Roar, Sydney FC and Melbourne City
unprecedented influence.
(INDISTINCT ON-FIELD YELLING)
NICK HARRIS: When you actually look at the meaning of the word 'club'
and what it should actually mean,
what all these great sports clubs started out as -
these are social institutions of great importance
to the people that support them, to the communities where they reside.
These, yes, might now be owned
by, you know, oligarchs and billionaires,
but, essentially, the people at the heart of any sports club
are its fans in the communities where those clubs reside.
CHRIS MCALISTER: I think we expect a lot more
from companies nowadays than we used to.
Like, even 10 years ago, we didn't expect the same level
of social responsibility or environmental responsibility
that we do now.
And I don't think owning a football team
makes you immune from those pressures.
In fact, I think it probably increases them in a lot of ways
because you have the livelihood
of so many prominent people and well-respected people
and, you know, heroes and idols for young kids
on your payroll
that you should be held to those same levels
of moral and ethical, environmental, social standards
that we're holding other companies to.
Captions by Red Bee Media
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation