Fifa president comes under more pressure

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0:30but the US government has not admitted responsibility. I'm Asma Khalid and I host the Global Story podcast on the BBC. The BBC has now visited the site of the school and spoken to Iranians about what they saw. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:52Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesby. The president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, is facing yet more pressure to resign following his controversial plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup and other competitions to private investors last week. Even though he withdrew that plan in the early hours of Saturday morning, not only have the Confederations governing football in Europe, North and Central America and the Caribbean and Asia criticised the plan, Now the English and Welsh football associations are officially withdrawing their support for him.

1:30Could others follow? On top of that, UEFA, the governing body for European football, is threatening Mr Infantino with legal action. In a letter to him, UEFA says it wants immediate steps to identify, locate and reserve all documents and electronically stored information described in this notice that are in your or FIFA possession, custody or control. It all follows really strongly worded statements from UEFA and CONCACAF at the weekend. In the case of UEFA, directly criticising Gianni Infantino personally for the plan and general leadership. Let's speak live now to David Bernstein. He's former chair of the English Football Association and joins us live.

2:13David, can Gianni Infantino survive in post? Should he stay as the FIFA boss? I don't think he can survive in place and he should not. Just to recap, this was a very, very bad deal. It was a sweetheart deal. It was in secret. I think it was done as an undervaluation and it was done with a very tight timetable to try and squeeze it through. Totally unacceptable. So the answer is it was excessively negative, that deal, and he has to go. So was it mainly the secrecy of the deal that has got people objecting so much? I mean, in this UEFA statement of the weekend, they say, quote, the shabby backroom opaque deal he's hatched and tried to force through was anything but transparent.

3:02I mean, are they accusing Infantino of corruption? Well, no, not necessarily of corruption. I wouldn't use that word. But it's not just a secrecy. It was a sweet, what I call a sweetheart deal. It was a deal between sort of pals. And I think, as I say, it was an undervalue. I suspect that FIFA may be worth in total maybe$50 billion. And this deal valued it under half of that. So it had all sorts of problems. And I do think, just let me put it on the table straight away, UEFA did the right thing in threatening to withdraw for the World Cup if the deal wasn't withdrawn, which it has been. But I think they should maintain that threat until Infantino goes away.

3:53Because Infantino and the deal are joined at the hip now and we're going to have a divided, unsatisfactory FIFA going forward until this gets sorted. I mean, this does seem to be rather an unprecedented moment for FIFA, but it's not the first crisis they've had in terms of leadership and questionable decisions made in the past by Mr Infantino's forebears. Is there a structural problem within FIFA? Yes, I think there is. I think the whole thing is a bit like a secret society in some ways. There's a lot of underhand work. And a lot of the success of both Sepp Blatter and Infantino is in keeping their constituents happy.

4:38Now, it's not necessarily a bad thing, But they pay out a lot of money to the national federations, which is as they should do. But sometimes it comes with conditions. I think with this deal, if I hear this correctly, Infantino promised that he would give societal sums of money to national associations who supported him. Now, that's not the way to behave. I mean, I wouldn't use the word bribe over liberally, but it's something very close to that. is using money wanting to get undue influence. Well, yes, I mean, there was a financial reward connected to supporting his plan, wasn't there? Which he was sort of rushing through.

5:20But I mean, some of those football associations in maybe poorer countries outside of Europe, which don't have very developed football bodies, might say that, you know, the European FAs are quite heavy-handed. They're sort of swinging their weight around on this, trying to get rid of Infantino. when actually those countries could have done with the cash. Now, you'll come to a very good point, Rebecca, that is that there was a germ of sense in this. In other words, raising money in the right way to distribute to, as you quite rightly say, all national societies, including some that really need it, is not necessarily a bad thing.

6:00What was a bad thing was the way it was going to be done. And I do have a thought about a much better way of doing it, which would be Democrat. Well, I will try and tell you, it's not too complicated. So what I would consider, and this is absolutely radical, and I have to say, I haven't seen anybody else come up with this idea yet, is FIFA is of huge value. And I say it could be worth$50 billion. I would think about listing it on a stock exchange, probably in the USA. In other words, floating as a public company. You could attract hundreds of thousands of fans as shareholders. Fans could be encouraged to put out$100 or$1 ,000 or$1 million or anywhere in between into FIFA, become shareholders, as you would do in Apple or Microsoft and so on.

6:48And by doing so, A, you would empower to some extent and certainly get involved with the worldwide fan base of football to invest in FIFA. And anybody I've spoken to about this, by the way, they're, oh, yes, I would love the opportunity to invest in FIFA. and then you get regular reports and accounts on them and so on. So number one, it would be democratic. Number two, you'd get, I think, a much higher value, which means that the countries you're talking about could get much more money than they were going to get under this deal. And thirdly, and not the least important, it would bring proper governance to FIFA.

7:22They would be subject to the sort of governance that you would get in a public company. Well, David, very interesting ideas from you. Thank you so much for sharing those with us here. Good to speak to you. That's David Bernstein there, former chair of the English Football Association. Well, Gianni Infantino has provoked controversy a few times during his tenure as the president of FIFA. Many questioned his judgment in backing Qatar as the host nation for the 2022 World Cup, particularly because same-sex relationships are illegal in Qatar, including a prison sentence of up to seven years. Speaking on the eve of that competition in 22, Gianni Infantino raised eyebrows in his choice of language when accusing the West of hypocrisy in its reporting about Qatar's human rights record.

8:06Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today, I feel a migrant worker. Well, fast forward to December last year, and he faced criticism again for inventing a totally new FIFA prize for one particular president. Please welcome the very first winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, the 45th and 47th president of the United States of America, Mr. Donald J. Trump. And you definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way. Well, thank you very much. This is truly one of the great honours of my life.

9:11But this latest plan to encourage private investment in the World Cup really upset many fans of the game. After his governance chief quit on Friday, Mr Infantino did scrap his own plans, but here's a reminder of what he wanted to do. It would simply commercialise and organise all FIFA-owned competitions, along with sponsorship brokers licensing a new venture for the benefit of FIFA's 211 member associations. However, unlocking previously uncaptured commercial value. Strengthening the commercial side of the game is the natural next step in this evolution. That's Gianni Infantino speaking last week.

10:01Well, we're joined live now by Tariq Panja. He's a global sports correspondent at the New York Times. Tariq, great to speak to you. Thanks for coming on. First of all, I wonder if you managed to hear what David Bernstein was saying there about the future presidency of FIFA. His idea was to put it on the stock exchange, make it a public company, fans could invest and become shareholders. What do you make of that idea? He's not the first person to say this, and this isn't the first scandal FIFA has had. What David was saying just takes me back to May 2015, when the Swiss authorities acting on behalf of the Department of Justice dragged the previous group of FIFA leaders out of luxury hotel bedrooms in Switzerland and replaced them with what we've had now with Gianni Infantino and co.

10:49And there was talk then of this. And the reason we won't have this is because if you do a listing, you become a public company. Guess what? You need to have a greater degree of transparency over your operations. And as we've seen here from these people, whether it's Sepp Blatter's period, Havalanche before him and now Gianni Infantino, the light is not something that this organisation seems to enjoy. To me, it seems like FIFA is impossible to reform from within. It will require outside bodies, perhaps governments, to now take a closer look at what FIFA is. One idea that has been doing the rounds as well, Tariq, is that maybe there could be a rotating presidency rather in the way that you have in some political bodies like the EU, for example, whereby a country or a football association would take over the presidency for a four or five year period, I guess, to get through the next World Cup.

11:46Is that a good idea? Yeah, that's something that I've been speaking about with people. And then you have less of this kind of, at the moment, you have people at FIFA who think they are in a battle and they are commercially with their confederations, for example, looking for television revenue or sponsors against UEFA, for example, whereas UEFA is also sat, as Alexander Sheffield, the president, is also a vice president of FIFA. It's kind of not fit for purpose, this system. But I think it's much bigger than all of this, really. So we're talking about FIFA today, but the entire football pyramid is full of little FIFAs, whether it is the confederations, the ones that we're really celebrating here for for standing up to this or whether it is a lot of the football associations around the world a lot of these organizations are riven with the same problems we are seeing here in the much bigger scale with infantino and and what he's doing with this scheme what should be happening is a bigger conversation perhaps of how this most popular of sports this engine of the global sports economy is actually run whether at a regional level or at the fifa level because you might You change something at FIFA, but the UEFA model is almost exactly the same.

12:59And briefly, we hear that UEFA is threatening legal action as well now. Are fans losing faith in the game because of all of this? No, I think what we've seen is the game is so strong, it's so powerful, because we've just had this World Cup and the passions that it stirred, the billions of people that watched either all over the world and the millions that came to the stadiums. And that is why, in a way, these people can get away with it, because whatever they do to try and damage it, the sport has such a powerful hold over society that people just keep coming back for more. Good to speak to you, Tariq.

13:35Thank you so much for joining us live there. That's Tariq Panja, global sports correspondent for The New York Times.

13:47One of Europe's most wanted drugs fugitives, Jos Leideckers, is living freely and with government protection in West Africa. That's according to the government of the Netherlands. Last year, the Dutch Justice Ministry sent an extradition request to the government of Sierra Leone, who've so far failed to acknowledge his presence in their country or his alleged close links to the country's first family. Jos Leideckes has been convicted in his absence on multiple counts of cocaine trafficking, crimes of violence. Ed Butler reports from Freetown.

14:23May 1st this year, and the head of the Spanish Coast Guard's anti-drug operation, Lieutenant Colonel Oscar Ramacha, receives a tip-off. A cargo boat is travelling across the Atlantic. It's about to transfer a large shipment of cocaine, he's been told, to smaller speedboats off the southern coast of Spain. Some part is for the Spanish market, but other part is spread through the European countries. Customs officers board the ship. What they found was no ordinary haul. Some 30 tonnes of cocaine packaged in plain view along a corridor running from bow to stern. It was the biggest seaborne seizure of cocaine ever made.

15:1322 crew members from Europe, Africa and Suriname were arrested. But the suspected mastermind behind the shipment, a Dutch drug dealer called Jos, or Jos Leidekes, who's based in Sierra Leone, well, he remained at large. He controlled all the cocaine from Sierra Leone to other parts of the world. He is put in big warehouses. He's the boss in Sierra Leone, but he has his fingers in other parts of the world. This was when the Sierra Leonean public first learned of the mysterious and clearly very wealthy foreigner living in their midst. A violent brawl at a nightclub in the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown, caught on camera.

16:02Sophie van Leeuwen is a Dutch TV reporter covering Africa for NTL News. There has been a shooting. He was involved. Other people were involved. Mysteriously, despite one man suffering two gunshot wounds to his kneecaps, the Sierra Leonean police dropped all charges. People could hardly help noticing him around town, though, a conspicuous and flamboyant foreigner. He was hanging around where the resorts are, but also at the casino restaurants. He visits the president's daughter and he gives her presents. Flowers, they also like to go out together. The authorities said we don't know him, but local people tell us we do know him and we know he's connected to the president.

16:46The story really gained international attention when a silent video emerged of a church service attended by the president, Julius Marder-Bio, and his wife, Fatima. Just one row behind them sits a clearly identifiable Lideckers alongside the president's eldest daughter. The couple are now rumoured to have a child together. When questioned by the BBC, though, the first lady, Fatima Bio, denied all knowledge of Lideckers. But the rumours of sightings, of drug shipments arriving on beaches late at night, these persist. I requested an interview with Sierra Leone's president. The request was declined.

17:24Julius Marder-Bio has never spoken publicly to the media on the subject. But I did visit the office of the Attorney General, Alpha Cisse, who also serves now as Sierra Leone's Justice Minister. Well, of course, I've been speaking with the Dutch government. We do note that the Dutch government is interested in an individual who is alleged to be based here in Sierra Leone running operations in the drug trade. I mean, he's been widely seen. There are photos and videos of him with the president and the first lady in the last couple of years. Isn't he raising a family with the president's daughter?

17:55I mean, I wouldn't know. Look, it's a matter that we take very seriously. If he's confirmed to be the person of interest, that person will be arrested. Well, in the last few weeks, the Dutch Justice Ministry has gone further, calling on Brussels to introduce EU-wide sanctions against Sierra Leone for its perceived refusal to extradite this wanted fugitive. Ed Butler reporting. Now, the celebrated horse behaviourist from California, Monty Roberts, has died at the age of 91. He was a pioneering horse whisperer, as they're often called, who developed an alternative non-aggressive method for training horses, which has been adopted by many around the world.

18:36Speaking to the BBC back in 2007, Monty explained how he learned to communicate with horses from the age of seven. They want us to lead them. They want us to show them what we ask of them. Their communication system is sign language. It's a language of gestures. I didn't know the gestures, but I followed the horse's lead and he took me to some places which showed me that I could say, that's a good boy and give him a rub and then walk away from him. And I don't know what innately told me to walk away, drop my eyes and walk away. But if you stop and think about it, no predator has ever done that.

19:15I'm saying I'm not a predator. Kelly Marks was inspired by Monty. She's the founder of Intelligent Horsemanship, which teaches people how to train and care for horses. She told me how she first met the great Monty Roberts. Well, it was extraordinary, really. There is a saying, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. and that's what seemed to happen here. I was working at a college teaching about horses at the time and they sent me out to France with some students and Monty was working with a horse at the same time that had problems jumping out of the starting stores and we met in a fuel station in France, in Chantilly to be precise.

19:56Just by chance, it seems. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, his father was a horse trainer, wasn't he? and had a more traditional view of training a horse or breaking a horse, which can be quite rough, I think. And that's the way horse training has always been done. But Monty started riding at a very young age and learned there was a different way of doing it. Monty's father was extremely hard on horses and on Monty. And I believe that's what made Monty turn the other way, if you like, that his saying was always violence is never the answer. but 40 years ago there wasn't a lot of thought around some things uh if there was a problem with a horse it would tend to be uh whip it make it go in circles for a long time to tire it out or kindest method turn him out for a year that wasn't so bad but anything different from that was seen as eccentric and when Monty first came over and showed different ways it wasn't accepted by everybody and extraordinary good luck.

21:04It was accepted though by Queen Elizabeth II. Well, yes, I was going to ask you about that because she was a great fan of Monty Roberts and they actually became great friends, didn't they? I've got a feeling it was her that urged him to write his first book. What can you tell us about that? Yes, that's absolutely right. There's Monty's book, The Man Who Listens to Horses, which I I believe is still available today. It explains more of the whole story. And there was many times I've heard Monty talking on the phone to Her Majesty, and she had an enormous effect on his career by giving her, you know, agreement with it.

21:44Well, he had such a long life and continued advising and teaching and writing into his later years. I mean, what will his legacy be, do you think? Do you think he's changed horse training and perhaps even animal training permanently now? Yes, I do think that. And I think he's worked with children, with prisoners and with the armed forces. He's worked with them for seeing how being gentle with horses can help people with post-traumatic stress. One of the things of working in the right way with horses is it can really bring your pulse rate down. You have to work hard to gain their trust. And to do that, you have to get yourself right first.

22:27And it's great when you get the trust of a horse. Horse trainer Kelly marks there on the great horse whisperer Monty Roberts, who's died at the age of 91.

22:45It's been five months since the deadliest civilian strike of the US-Israel war in Iran. 120 children killed at a school. Experts say the evidence indicates it was American forces that hit the school, but the US government has not admitted responsibility. I'm Asma Khalid and I host the Global Story podcast on the BBC. The BBC has now visited the site of the school and spoken to Iranians about what they saw. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:17Japan and the US have confirmed that both countries coordinated moves to prop up the yen last week after the Japanese currency fell to a 40-year low. President Trump said the move was a signal of friendship, but also benefited the US financially and was good for the world economy, he said. So what is going on and should we be worried about it? I've been speaking to Katie Martin, Markets columnist for the Financial Times. There's been a really big drop in the Japanese yen that's been rumbling along for months and months, and the yen has ended up at an incredibly weak level. Normally, what Japan would do to try and fix that would be to sell some dollars to push the yen higher.

23:59First of all, it doesn't always work if you try and do these things on your own as a country. But secondly, the US is quite sensitive to the notion that any country anywhere could be selling large amounts of dollars, because that's problematic for the US economically too. So getting the US involved in a joint effort to try and stabilise the Japanese currency seems to be their way around this. It's quite interesting, isn't it? Because there was an image circulating the past few days taken over the shoulder, I think, of the Treasury Secretary, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's shoulder at a meeting at Camp David, mentioning the yen.

24:40Can you tell us about that? And was that significant? Yeah, this little note, I'm not sure whether it was photographed by accident or whether he kind of wanted everyone to see this. Either way, the note literally says to do by yen. And he did. So, you know, he sticks to his to do list. This is the first time that the US has done something like this with Japan in almost 30 years. And any kind of joint international effort to either weaken or strengthen the currency is incredibly unusual. The last time anything like this happened was 2011 after the big earthquake and tsunami in Japan, where all of the G7 countries banded together to try and stabilize the Japanese currency.

25:23At that point, the Japanese currency was too strong. We're in a completely different world now. But I think there's a couple of things going on here. One is that the US wants to show who its allies are and wants to put a protective arm around countries that it thinks it can work with. So it did another intervention on a smaller scale on behalf of Argentina a few months ago. It's made some noises about offering backup facilities for countries in the Gulf that they're friendly with in the Middle East. And now this is another instance where they're saying Japan is an ally. They want some help and we're willing to give that help.

25:55And the other element is, as I say, they just don't want Japan selling too many dollars all at once because the US government bond market is already quite weak and having additional selling would make it weaker. This is in effect a recognition by the US that it is very sensitive to the possibility that foreign countries could sell US government bonds. And already, I think I'm right in saying the US pays out more money servicing its debt than it does in spending on the military. So it can't afford for its bond market to get much weaker. It needs to keep those borrowing costs lower. And so keeping foreign demand for US government bonds is really, really important.

26:35That's Katie Martin, their markets columnist for The Financial Times.

26:45You're listening to NewsHour live from the BBC. I'm Rebecca Kesby. Now, the relentless heat in Europe continues to cause problems. Italy is putting most of its major cities on high alert as another heatwave hits. Firefighters in Greece are battling wildfire now on three fronts just west of the capital Athens. And there are concerns that major rivers in the continent are also too low, causing other problems. Let's get an update with the BBC's Sarah Rainsford, who joins us live from Rome. Sarah, first of all, what's the latest on these fires? We know it's been quite a bad situation in Greece. How serious is that situation?