Topic: FIFA Investigated by FBI

[oldfordie]

this is fucking beautiful

Couldn't have put it better myself.
They have had years to build up this case, the evidence against these people was there years ago, BBC exposed overwhelming evidence so they must have far more today. hopefully they will all bring the whole corrupt system down with them to reduce there sentence.

[Nessy76]

Couldn't have put it better myself.
They have had years to build up this case, the evidence against these people was there years ago, BBC exposed overwhelming evidence so they must have far more today. hopefully they will all bring the whole corrupt system down with them to reduce there sentence.

Don't hold your breath. The problems go right to the core of most of the individual associations. The FA, hard as it is to believe, are probably among the least corrupt members of FIFA. It's institutional, these bodies are stacked top to bottom with grabbing chancers. You could throw every member of the FIFA board in prison for life and their replacements would just bubble up from the same ooze with the same self serving agendas, handouts, back handers, smiles and handshakes.

[carling]

Daily Mash nailing it 

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/sport-headlines/qatar-still-the-home-of-football-says-blatter-2015052798633

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has confirmed that Qatar remains the birthplace of football and no investigation will change that.

Criminal charges against senior FIFA officials, and investigations into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids, will not have any effect on Qatar’s proud history as the mother of the beautiful game.

Blatter said: “Every since Yusuf al-Webb Ellis first kicked a ball, made from an inflated camel’s bladder, between two sand dunes in 1320 the Qatari nation has been football mad.

“So many moments of Qatar’s history are footballing ones; the Bin Matthews final of 1953, the benevolent rule of Emir Pelé under which the country gained independence, and of course the 1966 World Cup win against the United Arab Emirates.

“Who can forget the famous commentary, ‘Some of the crowd are on the pitch, they will be flogged and their wives will be flogged and they will die like dogs. It is over for them now.’”

Blatter confirmed that the 2022 World Cup, which will take place in Qatar’s green and pleasant valleys which are currently off-limits to journalists, will take place as planned.

He added: “And I will still be president. Or there will be no more football. It is your choice.”

[jambutty]

The US got the Swiss to reveal the tax dodgers.

This will deffo have an effect, but all you Yank bashers can get your comments in.

Good work, I say.

[Trump's tiny tiny hands]

Everyone who has watched Wolf of Wall Street will know: the federal officers in the States are patient and will make sure their case is water tight before acting... and that there was lots of tits and arse.

[Jonny-B]

They're using RICO?

These guys will be offered a deal. Spill everything you get or life without parole in a supermax.

Along with losing all their worldly possessions along with those of family members.

[markedasred]

You have to take your hat off to Brendan for this, a masterpiece of redirection, just a few anonymous phone calls and all the heat is off him.

[oldfordie]

Don't hold your breath. The problems go right to the core of most of the individual associations. The FA, hard as it is to believe, are probably among the least corrupt members of FIFA. It's institutional, these bodies are stacked top to bottom with grabbing chancers. You could throw every member of the FIFA board in prison for life and their replacements would just bubble up from the same ooze with the same self serving agendas, handouts, back handers, smiles and handshakes.

Yes, Considering it's been blatantly going on for years and nothing has ever been done doesn't inspire confidence.
This is different though, nothing like this has happened before.
I imagine the strongest evidence will be all the bank account statements.
100.000s paid into there personal accounts every few months by the same people. the amount of money paid in backhanders is incredible.
What did FIFA do to the investigators who worked hard to get all the paper evidence that exposed this corruption,thank them for rooting out the corruption. they banned them from entering FIFA buildings. put all this in front a jury and I honestly think theres nothing down for a lot of these corrupt b......

[robgomm]

Yes, let's automatically connect the nation states level of corruption with the FIFA delegates level of corruption. Nothing shouts morality more than sweeping statements, preconceptions, and bias opinion.

Especially when those developing nations like in Africa have suffered as a result of corruption.

[TepidT2O]

The US only shows up when there are natural resources or money to plunder

Untrue in this case...

Justice is very important in the US.  Their sports institutions seem very just.

[oldfordie]

9 Officials arrested + 5 executives.
4 individuals+2 corporate defendants have pleaded guilty. yeees. start gabbing.

[jambutty]

If footy is gonna be big in the US (enhanced camerawork and boom airtimes is making it so), it's not gonna be run by Blatter's mob.

Objectively, however, the footy institutions in the 3rd world may have been the most reliable sources of finance (no matter how corrupt) to some countries.

The timing is perfect and why Putin is all smiles these days.

Fucking crocodile.

[NHRed]

True that..

Why did it take the U.S. to sort this out?

If it involves US dollars, or if it goes through a U.S. Bank, or if a relevant email was stored on a server in the U.S. - the U.S. claims jurisdiction.

I should add the U.S.'s case is currently focused on corruption in CONCACAAF (including, to be fair, corruption regarding award the World Cup to Qatar), and is being driven by plea-bargained information from a U.S. citizen, Chuck Blazer.

[OzBomber]

Doesn't mean anything in my eyes until Qatar gets stripped of the tournament.

[Ray K]

Some of the worst offenses have gone unpunished. On the afternoon of Jan. 12, 2010, an earthquake rocked Haiti, right as the board of the nation’s soccer association was meeting in its ­Port-au-Prince headquarters. The president, Yves Jean-Bart, escaped lightly injured. As the building collapsed, rubble pinned coach Jean Yves Labaze, who died along with at least 31 others. The next day, when the phones were back up, Blatter called Jean-Bart and pledged help. FIFA said it sent $250,000 in aid to the head of North and Central American soccer at the time, Warner, in Trinidad and Tobago. A contributor from South Korea sent an additional $500,000. Jean-Bart says he got only a fraction of it. At first, “we got a small shipment of rice, but if you count it up it was worth less than $10,000,” he says . Additional assistance, for reopening offices, running matches, and other items, brought the total aid received to just $429,000, he says.

After Jean-Bart complained to FIFA and the regional confederation, Warner drew up an accounting of how the money was spent. A copy obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek shows receipts of more than $229,000 for generators, food, blankets, and other supplies from a Trinidad company whose address doesn’t appear to exist. Jean-Bart says he never received those supplies. More than $366,222 went toward bringing two Haitian soccer teams to Trinidad and other countries for matches, according to the ledger. Their flights were arranged by a Warner family travel agency, and their lodging was at Warner’s conference center—the one he built with FIFA money. Warner dragged Jean-Bart into it, too. The final section of the accounting shows $30,000 ­allocated to pay for Jean-Bart’s daughter’s medical school bills. Christina Jean-Bart says she didn’t receive any money and didn’t pursue medical school. Almost five years later, FIFA says it’s still investigating the Haitian matter.

From Bloomberg.  Stealing money from one of the poorest countries in the world after an earthquake.

Never mind a federal prison. They should just get Marcellus Wallace on the case, and get to work on Warner with a pair of fucking pliers and a blowtorch.

[Nessy76]

Yes, Considering it's been blatantly going on for years and nothing has ever been done doesn't inspire confidence.
This is different though, nothing like this has happened before.
I imagine the strongest evidence will be all the bank account statements.
100.000s paid into there personal accounts every few months by the same people. the amount of money paid in backhanders is incredible.
What did FIFA do to the investigators who worked hard to get all the paper evidence that exposed this corruption,thank them for rooting out the corruption. they banned them from entering FIFA buildings. put all this in front a jury and I honestly think theres nothing down for a lot of these corrupt b......

Oh yeah, this wouldn't be happening unless the FBI were absolutely sure they could make it stick, there's far too much potential for embarrassment, this will have been taken to the absolute highest levels with cast-iron guarantees that there was enough evidence, or the US would be looking at massive damages.

My point was simply that whether these particular crooks go to prison or not will not make a massive difference to the organisation of FIFA as it is staffed by crooks from ceiling to floor.

Did you ever watch The Wire? One of the recurring themes there was that no matter how many drug pushers (of whatever seniority) you put behind bars, the amount of drugs on the street doesn't change, just the faces on the corners.

Or think of Hydra in Marvel's Agents of SHIELD - cut off one head and two more will grow in its place.

[driftinwest]

An hour long program on Blatter tonight on BBC radio five live, There's only one Sepp Blatter 8.00 PM, should be interesting I'm hoping they reveal some hard evidence to help get rid of the old goat.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05w8ftq

[Nessy76]

An hour long program on Blatter tonight on BBC radio five live, There's only one Sepp Blatter 8.00 PM, should be interesting I'm hoping they reveal some hard evidence to help get rid of the old goat.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05w8ftq

Doubt it will make much difference. He's paid for that election, fair and square. They'll vote him back in.

[elsewhere]

Sickening stuff. God knows if there was no Liverpool, i wouldn't ever follow this corrupt sport.

[driftinwest]

Doubt it will make much difference. He's paid for that election, fair and square. They'll vote him back in.

That's true he's set up the voting system so that he never loses, but these latest arrests have got to have Blatter and his corrupt cronies worried, hopefully the net is tightening around Blatter's mob and his reign is coming to an end.

[Ray K]

Sickening stuff. God knows if there was no Liverpool, i wouldn't ever follow this corrupt sport.

John Oliver's take on FIFA during the World Cup

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/DlJEt2KU33I" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/DlJEt2KU33I</a>

[please, I have my reasons for it but...]

I'd like to see Loretta Lynch on the cover of FIFA 16.

[DeLeiva]

Colin Murray has just posted the link to this on Twitter, really interesting article on the Supergrass Chuck Blazer:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/chuck-blazer-reportedly-informed-fbi-in-fifa-investigation-2015-5?r=US

The story behind the former top-ranking FIFA executive who reportedly became an FBI informant

Authorities arrested more than a dozen people on Wednesday as part of an investigation of FIFA corruption, The New York Times reported.

And the man who reportedly helped the FBI build its case is a former top-ranking FIFA executive from New York City. The New York Daily News published an investigation in November about the involvement of former FIFA Executive Committee member Chuck Blazer in the corruption case, and BuzzFeed wrote about the "swindling suburban soccer dad" in June.

Blazer was "one of the most powerful men in world soccer" before he left FIFA in 2013 amid an ethics investigation, according to SB Nation, which noted that Blazer most likely cooperated with the FBI's FIFA investigation to avoid jail time.

Blazer has pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, wire-fraud conspiracy, money-laundering conspiracy, income-tax evasion, and failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR), according to a US Department of Justice statement released Wednesday. He forfeited nearly $2 million and agreed to pay another undetermined amount when he is sentenced.

It is unclear whether Blazer made a deal with investigators and what his sentence will be.

Those arrested on corruption charges on Wednesday include some of FIFA's highest-ranking officials. While FIFA President Sepp Blatter was not among those arrested, officials told The Times that the investigation was ongoing and that Blatter had not been cleared of wrongdoing.

The arrests came as FIFA officials gathered in Zurich for their annual meeting. Arrested officials are expected to be extradited to the US, according to The Times. Authorities allege that the officials accepted millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks from the 1990s to today.

While Blazer's role in the case has not been officially confirmed by authorities, he is suspected of being a key player in the investigation.

How Blazer became an FBI informant
Blazer reportedly turned on Jack Warner, the former president of FIFA's governing body for soccer in North America and the Caribbean and one of the officials arrested Wednesday, when he realized that he might be linked to Warner's ethics violations.

Blazer was reportedly Warner's right-hand man, and he most likely turned Warner in to ethics investigators to avoid being labeled a fellow conspirator once Warner's transgressions became so obvious that it seemed likely he would be caught, according to the Daily News.

The FBI and the IRS reportedly persuaded Blazer to cooperate by telling him they knew he had been evading taxes for decades.

To help the FBI build its case, Blazer reportedly took a keychain with a tiny microphone embedded in it around with him to meetings with FIFA officials, according to the Daily News. Some of these meetings took place at the London Olympics in 2012. Blazer reportedly emailed the officials the FBI was targeting and arranged to meet them at the games.

Blazer's lavish lifestyle
Blazer himself was reportedly enjoying the perks of his position. The Daily News wrote about the millions of dollars he charged to credit cards to fund his extravagent lifestyle, which reportedly included a Trump Tower apartment just for his cats.

From 1996 to 2011, Blazer reportedly made $15.3 million in commission from sponsorships and TV rights, revenue from match tickets, and sales of luxury suite rentals, parking and venue concessions, according to the Daily News. Blazer allegedly hid the money in shell companies. He also earned millions more for his position with CONCACAF, the governing body of soccer in North America and the Caribbean.

CONCACAF reportedly paid thousands of dollars for fancy apartments and a Hummer car for Blazer, who racked up millions in personal expenses that CONCACAF paid for.

Blazer was known for eating at expensive restaurants frequented by celebrities and flying on private jets. He had a luxury condo in the Bahamas and had reportedly met Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton, Pope John Paul II, and Nelson Mandela, according to BuzzFeed.

CONCACAF investigated Blazer and in 2013 found that he defrauded the confederation, according to BuzzFeed.

How Blazer rose to the top of international soccer
Blazer's rise within FIFA was meteoric. In 1989, he was an unemployed suburban soccer dad who was stuck in debt, according to an extensive BuzzFeed profile of him.

Blazer first got involved in soccer when his son started playing in 1976. He started coaching the team and became more deeply involved in the sport, despite never having played himself. He eventually graduated from his roles in youth soccer to and moved up the ranks of state and national soccer organizations.

Blazer got elected executive vice president of the United States Soccer Federation in 1984. Blazer lost his spot within the USSF in 1986 when he failed to get reelected, but then he co-founded a new professional league called the American Soccer League, which eventually merged with another league after only two seasons, BuzzFeed reported.

Blazer met Warner in 1984 when they were both serving at CONCACAF. The pair became friends at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, according to BuzzFeed. Blazer convinced Warner to run for president of CONCACAF, and Blazer ran his campaign. When Warner won, he appointed Blazer general secretary in charge of the confederation's daily operations.

Blazer reportedly knew a lot about the business side of soccer and was an audacious salesman, making him a good candidate for reviving soccer in America.

Ken Bensinger wrote in BuzzFeed: "[Blazer] helped win Major League Soccer’s first real TV contract, and [last year] the MLS inked a $720 million TV deal. The U.S. national team, which he helped promote, is now a World Cup mainstay, ranked higher than powers such as France and the Netherlands. And more people in America are playing soccer than any team sport save basketball."

Blazer eventually got a spot on FIFA's Executive Committee, the first American to do so in nearly 50 years, and reportedly helped turn FIFA into a "profit machine," according to BuzzFeed.

[Chakan]

Hopefully this all leads to Russia and Qatar losing their bids.

[Cochise]

I hope these fellas who have been arrested are fucking grasses and throw Blatter to the dogs.

[please, I have my reasons for it but...]

German sportswear company Adidas is calling on Fifa to do more "to establish and follow transparent compliance standards in everything they do" following the charges. It's not the first time the firm - which has been associated with Fifa for more than half a century - has expressed concern over corruption allegations, Reuters reports.

[BrandoLFC]

Charging them via RICO is going to make someone roll as RICO basically allows you to seize everything the defendant owns and has prior to the trial even starting.  The defendant will then be unable to mount their own defense due to a lack of funds.  As far as Blatter, RICO charges are actually pretty easy to bring:

The RICO Act focuses specifically on racketeering, and it allows the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes which they ordered others to do or assisted them, closing a perceived loophole that allowed someone who told a man to, for example, murder, to be exempt from the trial because he did not actually commit the crime personally.

[JongWK]

Didn't Conmebol surprisingly not support Blatter's re-election a couple of months ago? Might be wrong but most of those arrested links to the Americas....

Basically I'm asking....

No, Conmebol is a staunch supporter of Blatter, because it would otherwise lose the playoff slot for the World Cup. Everyone in Uruguay hates Blatter for the Suarez ban, but the FA has already said it would vote for him because "it's good politics". 

[Ray K]

Charging them via RICO is going to make someone roll as RICO basically allows you to seize everything the defendant owns and has prior to the trial even starting.  The defendant will then be unable to mount their own defense due to a lack of funds.  As far as Blatter, RICO charges are actually pretty easy to bring:

I was thinking another RICO Act would be more effective


The only good FIFA official is a dead FIFA official

[JongWK]

It should be noted that they also indicted/arrested the people that own the TV rights for all international football in South America.

There's going to be massive fallout here.

[Dread Breath]

I assume the Russian Sports Minister is basically unarrestable?

[Zeb]

I assume the Russian Sports Minister is basically unarrestable?

Russia don't extradite their own citizens. Unless it's politically convenient to do so.

[please, I have my reasons for it but...]

Lynch says $110m in bribes were related to next year’s Copa América Centenario in the United States alone.

[please, I have my reasons for it but...]

Russia don't extradite their own citizens. Unless it's politically convenient to do so.

Well since he is in Switzerland now, I am sure they can interrogate him.

[TepidT2O]

Well since he is in Switzerland now, I am sure they can interrogate him.

Difficult even then, because of diplomatic immunity

[TepidT2O]

FBI stating they believe bribes were paid for the 2010 World Cup in SA and the FIFA presidential campaign in 2011....

[b_joseph]

FBI doing the work that football associations should have been doing for years...

[please, I have my reasons for it but...]

FBI stating they believe bribes were paid for the 2010 World Cup in SA and the FIFA presidential campaign in 2011....

No Shit, Morrocco had that one won if it weren't for 4 guys mysteriously changing their votes at the last minute.

[BER]

In light of the the Westminster pedophile ring, you wonder what other liberties these cretins have taken besides monetary ones.

[telekon]

What happens if the FBI proves that the 2018 & 2022 were bought (something everyone knows for a fact)?

What happens if they find what everyone knows about the FIFA "EXCO" members for so long? Do they have the jurisdiction to have these men trialed? I doubt it.

Wouldn't doubt it, mate.