OpEd: Volleyball Whistleblower Deserves Dignity

(ATR) International volleyball federation FIVB meets in Buenos Aires this week, the perfect time to make things right for Mario Goijman says Jens Sejer Andersen of Play the Game.

Goijman became a notorious figure 14 years ago when he challenged the authority of Ruben Acosta, then president of the FIVB. Goijman led the Argentina volleyball federation at the time, helping to organize the 2002 world champs in Buenos Aires.

Goijman exposed Acosta’s self-dealing for the sale of TV rights and sponsorships. Goijman was booted from the FIVB executive and became persona non gratis to the federation, which also expelled the Argentine federation. But the revelations drew the interest of the IOC Ethics Commission which perhaps would have recommended a reprimand or even expulsion from the IOC for Acosta. Instead, Acosta resigned his IOC seat before the Ethics Commission could act.

The battle with the FIVB broke Goijman financially and he has never received any compensation or apology from the federation. That needs to change says Play the Game International Director Jens Sejer Andersen.

Open letter to Gerardo Werthein, President of the Argentine Olympic Committee and IOC member, Carlos MacAllister, Sports Minister of Argentina, and Ary Graça, President of the International Volleyball Federation.

In these hours, Argentina serves as host of a splendid and prestigious event when hundreds of leaders of one of the world’s most popular and profitable sports, volleyball, led by the International Volleyball Federation, FIVB, gather in Buenos Aires for its biannual World Congress.

In the Hilton Hotel there will most likely be champagne, there will be fiesta, there will be speeches on the values of sport in the education of the youth, there will be praise for Buenos Aires and its preparations for the Youth Olympic Games in 2018.

But there will also be silence. There will be forgetfulness. There will even be resistance against those who dare to remember. What cannot be mentioned is the enormous debt the volleyball world left behind after its last visit 14 years ago. A debt of more than one million US dollars.

For an international Olympic federation or an entire nation, a sum of this size does not have great importance. But when one single person carries the burden of such debt, it is easy to imagine that sooner or later this person will sink to his knees.

In these very days, an old colleague of the volleyball officials that party at the Hilton is on the verge of taking into the streets with his two dogs, homeless, ruined, depressive and diabetic.

I am referring to an Argentine citizen, Mario Goijman. During international volleyball’s last visit to Argentine in 2002, he was in the center of the events, he was the subject of applause. In the midst of a terrible financial crisis for his country, he managed to organize a successful World Championship and contribute to a better international image of his country.

But Mario Goijman paid a much too high price. As a pretty wealthy businessman, he had ensured 800,000 US dollars in personal grants and bank loans for which he guaranteed until the last peso. He ran a risk, yes, but knowing the internal rules of the FIVB, he had confidence he would get the money back from the international federation.

He knew the rules, but he did not sufficiently know the then president of world volleyball, Ruben Acosta from Mexico. After a series of confrontations, the almighty Acosta decided to throw out not only Mario Goijman and numerous sympathizers, but the entire Argentine federation from the volleyball family. And consequently, the FIVB did not want to pay its debts nor does it want to pay them today.

In the following years, Goijman worked arduously to demonstrate that Ruben Acosta was one of the most corrupt sports leaders the world had known till that date. In total, the FIVB itself has estimated that Ruben Acosta in his last years as president enriched himself with more than 33 million US dollars that should belong the sport and the athletes.

Today, the new president of the FIVB, the Brazilian Ary Graça declares that "Volleyball is unequivocally in a golden era of success". But he fails to recognize to whom great parts of this success is owed.

The documentation collected by Mario Goijman was decisive enough to ensure that Ruben Acosta had to leave his lucrative seat in 2008, and already in 2004, it was instrumental for allowing the International Olympic Committee to rid itself of one of its most controversial members, the same Ruben Acosta.

In this chain of events that was useful for sport, Mario Goijman spent all his financial and psychological resources without at any time receiving the rehabilitation he deserved and a fair compensation from the sport that he had helped safeguarding.

In the twenty years I have followed international sport and its numerous scandals closely, I have never seen a case so unjust as Goijman’s. I have never seen that many institutions look the other way when they were asked to live up to the ethical values they preach.

In these very hours, the drama unfolds in all its clarity in Buenos Aires. A rich and powerful organisation is looking into the mirror of its past represented by the figure of Mario Goijman.

I hope the volleyball officials see an image that inspire them to change their attitudes, I hope they will understand that the reflection of an elderly, impoverished, sick and desperate man, is the image of a responsibility that all sports leaders share and that they have to assume with no delay, because soon it will be too late.

Mario Goijman is a difficult person, without any doubt. But he was always an honest and integral person, unlike many other leaders in sport. And his tireless struggle against the abuse of his sport contributed to raise the prestige of Argentina and international volleyball.

Now it is time to give him back what he is owed: A possibility of cancelling his last debts, and a way to re-establish a normal life.

Today, I call upon all those leaders who love sport and ask that they recognise the efforts of a compatriot or colleague, asking them to prove themselves ready to put personal jealousies aside in order to protect the integrity and the humanity of sport.

In particular, I call upon the gentlemen Gerardo Werthein, President of the Argentine Olympic Committee and IOC member, Carlos MacAllister, Sports Minister of Argentina, and Ary Graça, President of the International Volleyball Federation.

You have the powerful positions. You should stretch out your hands. You have the key to the door that will close behind the ghosts of the past while at the same time open towards a dignifying future for Mario Goijman.

Written by Jens Sejer Andersen, International Director of Play the Game.

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