Charlie Dempsey

Dempsey served on the executive committee of FIFA from 1996 to 2000 and had been awarded the FIFA Order of Merit by May 2004. He had no longer used his office in the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) by February 2004, as he had stepped back at the beginning of the year. Dempsey died on 24 June 2008 aged 87 or 86, according to some sources. He was a builder and had emigrated with his wife to New Zealand in 1952. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.

Dempsey said that he did not vote because of the "intolerable pressure" from supporters of the German and South African bids, and of the attempts that had been made to bribe him. FIFA rejected calls for a new vote and opened an internal inquiry into the allegations of corruption. He stood down from his role in September 2000 as he was unable to accept what had taken place over the days after the vote.

Dempsey headed the Oceania Football Confederation from 1982 to 2000, and eventually left his position at FIFA two years early. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1982 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to association football, and in February 1990 he was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal.

Charles John Dempsey CBE (4 March 1921 – 24 June 2008) was a Scottish-born New Zealand association football administrator who in July 2000 abstained from FIFA's final round of voting for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in a move which eventually saw the competition being awarded to Germany rather than South Africa. He was once described as "Oceania's Flying Scotsman" at the 50th FIFA Congress in Zurich in August 1996.