Andrew Jennings, a milestone in investigative journalism and an inspiration for many people, passed away on January 8, 2022, after suffering a brief and sudden illness. Defunct at the age of 78, his work in the years has been crucial revolutionary for uncovering and revealing the corruption in world sport. For more than two decades he set new and higher standards for journalistic coverage of sports politics, becoming an example for the generations to come.
A true fighter – there is no better term to describe him – in every challenge he faced up to during all his career. From lawyers to media pundits, from sports leaders to big shots in general, nobody could divert his attention in exposing the murky side of the sports industry, with courage and commendable professionalism.
Born in Scotland on September 3, 1943, he moved as a child to London, England, where he spent his youth in a working-class neighbourhood in the UK Capital. He attended the University of Hull and later he worked for the Sunday Times’ Insight team in the late 1960s, after which he worked for other British newspapers, making in the years a name for himself. Afterwards, he deduced to focus on becoming an investigative reporter on BBC Radio Four’s Checkpoint. His first book, published in 1989, was entitled “Scotland Yard’s Cocaine Connection”.
THE FIRST STEP – At the beginning of his investigative career, he mainly focused on the corruption of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Despite the fact that, for his interventions and researches, he has been banished for some years from IOC events – in 1992 he cooperated in the making process of his first ground-breaking sportsbook, “The Lords of the Rings” – he did not surrender in front of the corruption he found in the system.
With his next work, “The New Lords of the Rings” – published in 1996 – he showed even further corrupt practices in international sports federations and the IOC, whose reform programme came under critical scrutiny in his fourth book, “The Great Olympic Swindle”, published in 2000 with Clare Sambrook as the co-author.
THE FIFA WORLD – Later on, he focused his attention on the FIFA world. He also started working for the international broadcaster BBC Panorama: his first documentary came out in June 2006, as an episode entitled “The Beautiful Bung: Corruption and the World Cup”.
From 2001 to the next years he took the front line against the corruption of the system, cooperating with Swiss and International authorities to uncover the truth. In 2006 he wrote his fifth book, entitled “FOUL! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-Rigging and Ticket Scandals”. For his researches and positions, he was banished by FIFA events – as other times happened during his life – getting involved with multiple legal threats from FIFA. In the years his job contributed dramatically to Sepp Blatter’s complaint, putting a stop to his mandate that was ongoing for almost 17 years. His fifth book, “Omertà: Sepp Blatter’s FIFA Organised Crime Family”, dramatically contributed to the process.
After the former’s FIFA President retirement, he summed up 15 years of researches in his fifth and final BBC Panorama programme, “FIFA, Sepp Blatter and Me”. In the same year, he published his sixth and last book, “The Dirty Game: Uncovering the Scandal at FIFA”.
Source: AIPS
