The president of the South African Football Association, Danny Jordaan, acknowledged that the country had paid out $10 million in 2008 but denied that the money had been in any way a bribe to FIFA for the 2010 World Cup, telling The Sunday Independent, a South African newspaper, “How could we have paid a bribe for votes four years after we had won the bid?”
Jordaan, who was the president of the 2010 local organizing committee, said the payment had been a contribution toward the soccer development fund of Concacaf, soccer’s governing body in North America, Central America and the Caribbean.