AN OFFICIAL at the centre of a World Cup corruption scandal was lobbied by Australian officials last year in a bid to secure his vote for Australia to host the planet's biggest sporting event.
Nigerian Amos Adamu, a powerful member of soccer's world governing body, FIFA, has been accused of offering to sell his World Cup vote to undercover journalists.
Reporters from Britain's Sunday Times posed as lobbyists for a business consortium that wanted the United States to host the soccer tournament.
Mr Adamu is one of 24 executive committee members of FIFA who will vote in December on which countries will host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
The newspaper alleged that Mr Adamu asked an undercover reporter for $806,000 for his vote. Mr Adamu requested that the money, to build four artificial soccer pitches in Nigeria, be paid to him personally.
Last November, Australian diplomatic officials in Africa helped arranged a meeting between Football Federation Australia bid officials, including chief executive Ben Buckley, and Mr Adamu in Abuja, Nigeria.
Two soccer lobbyists hired by FFA, Fedor Radmann and Peter Hargitay, were also given the task last year of lobbying Mr Adamu and other African executive committee members on behalf of Australia.
An FFA document, obtained by The Age, reveals that Australia's World Cup bid team planned to find development projects in Africa as part of efforts to win over African executive committee members.
The document from September 2009 lists a ''key action'' as ''identify[ing] relevant development projects to support Africa Exco [executive committee] members''. The document, titled ''Summary of agenda and action items'', also states that FFA's ''Africa strategy'' includes identifying ''Australian commercial partnerships in Africa that can be assets'' and assessing ''Africa Exco relationships with bid team''.
FIFA requires bidding nations to create a ''legacy program'' in which they fund soccer and socio-economic development in poorer countries.
But FIFA also prohibits offering any projects to buy an executive committee member's vote. FFA has stressed that all of its development projects are in line with FIFA rules.
The newspaper also claimed that the president of the Oceania Football Confederation, Tahiti's Reynald Temarii, asked for £1.5 million to fund a sports academy in exchange for his vote.
In his meeting with an undercover reporter in Auckland, Mr Temarii alleged that Oceania had been offered between £6 million and £7.5 million for its vote by two rival bids.
Mr Temarii reportedly also told the undercover reporters that $4 million in aid money given by the Australian government to Oceania had led to a promise to vote for Australia - a claim Mr Temarii has since strenuously denied.
FFA has said the $4 million grant, to be used by poorer nations in the region, is legitimate.
Earlier this year, The Age reported that Mr Hargitay was believed to have been involved in a decision by FFA to pay to fly a junior Caribbean soccer team closely linked to FIFA executive committee member Jack Warner to Cyprus for a tournament last year.
The Age also revealed earlier this year that FFA planned to pay up to $11.37 million in taxpayer-funded fees and bonuses to Mr Radmann and Mr Hargitay.
FIFA said it had requested access to material from the Sunday Times' undercover probe and would investigate.
England is competing to host the 2018 World Cup with Russia, and joint bids from Spain and Portugal, as well as Holland and Belgium. Bidding alongside the US for 2022 are Australia, Japan, South Korea and Qatar.
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