Interview with journalist Andrew Jennings, who exposed FIFA scandal, is first entry in online video archive

When The Mob Museum considered who to interview for a planned video production on the bribery scandal embroiling top executives of FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, investigative journalist Andrew Jennings topped the list.

After all, for fifteen years, Jennings, the Scottish-born longtime reporter for the BBC’s Panorama television series, had been covering suspicious goings-on by FIFA in awarding lucrative hosting and commercial rights to the World Cup. In 2014, he published an insightful book with the provocative title, Omertà: Sepp Blatter’s FIFA Organized Crime Family.

In June, after the U.S. Justice Department filed criminal charges alleging that nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives had taken more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks, Jennings agreed to sit down for an interview and describe the challenges he endured while reporting, practically by himself, on FIFA’s alleged illegal practices.

The Mob Museum sent a list of questions to Jennings and arraigned for filmmaker Adrian Turpin to record his answers from Jennings’ home in the city of Penrith in northwest England. Portions of the footage were used in a video that accompanies the museum’s FIFA display that opened on September 1.

The rest of the interview was used it to produce a 21-minute video, “FIFA: The Beautiful Game Turns Ugly,” that is now available for viewing.

The Andrew Jennings video is the first in a series of interviews the Museum plans to archive in the Video Vault on its website.

Click below to watch the interview with Jennings on the FIFA scandal.