FIFA officials arrested for corruption

Blazer, who was a suburban soccer dad when he got involved with FIFA, was a member of the executive committee from 1996 to 2013 and the general secretary of CONCACAF, the governing body for soccer in North American, Central America, and the Caribbean.

He was famously corrupt, including not paying income taxes for a decade. He also had an apartment in Trump Tower just for his cats, according to the New York Daily News. (For more on Blazer, read this BuzzFeed profile from last fall.)

Though Sepp Blatter easily won reelection to a fifth term as FIFA’s president last week, he’s made the very surprising decision to resign just days later.

In a short press conference announcing the move, he made no admission of wrongdoing, but acknowledged his critics — saying that the governing body would focus on reform to prevent future corruption, and that many felt he was not the right person to lead the change.

The international soccer governing body FIFA has been plagued by corruption for years — and according to many experts, Wednesday’s arrest of seven officials in connection with a bribery investigation is just the tip of the iceberg.

The US Department of Justice is claiming that FIFA officials took more than $150 million in bribes when awarding broadcast rights to the World Cup and other tournaments. Meanwhile, a parallel Swiss criminal investigation is looking into charges of money laundering involving the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively.

All hail the president of everybody, Sepp Blatter!

Blatter, president of FIFA, won a confidence vote in his leadership of the morally struggling empire on Friday. The Guardian shared his expansive statements, which went well beyond the organization:

After several top FIFA officials were arrested for corruption on Wednesday, the organization went ahead with a presidential election as planned.

And though longtime president Sepp Blatter faced a slightly stiffer challenge than expected, he still defeated the only challenger — Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan — winning an initial round by a count of 133 votes to 73. Blatter lost support among European countries and the US, but retained votes from Asia, Africa, and Latin America nations.

FIFA, currently facing the threat of losing huge brand sponsors like Visa and Adidas, relies heavily on advertising revenues to pay for billions in spending, as shown in this Economist graphics set:

The scandal has gone well beyond the world of sports advertising, and everyone has an opinion to share. Even British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted his support for “new leadership and reform”:

“You may think you know what FIFA is,” FIFA president Sepp Blatter declared during a 2013 speech. “A faceless machine printing money at the expense of the beautiful game, with me pulling the strings and laughing all the way to the bank.”

Blatter — who goes up for reelection today at the height of FIFA’s corruption scandal — was of course trying to defend himself and the organization from these charges. But he went on to perfectly capture critics’ views of FIFA in an utterly absurd, strangely poetic tirade:

The United States is pursuing corruption charges against 14 current and former officials from FIFA, the global governing body for international soccer, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

There is some irony in the fact that this case is being brought by US federal prosecutors. The United States is famously uninterested in soccer, which lags behind (American) football, basketball, and baseball in popularity. So what’s this case doing in a Brooklyn court?

Swiss prosecutors have begun an investigation into possible corruption in the bidding process that awarded Qatar the 2022 World Cup. The investigation will look at whether “criminal mismanagement and ... money laundering” helped Qatar gain rights to host the global competition.

Results from the corruption investigation won’t be available for a while. But one scandal involving the Qatar games is already obvious: the widespread and vast abuse of migrant workers there helping the tiny monarchy prepare for the games.

The indictment alleges that sports marketing companies bribed FIFA officials in order to obtain the rights to broadcast games. For instance, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said today that the corrupt officials had extracted more than $110 million in bribes just in relation to the 2016 Copa America, a tournament of 16 teams from throughout the Americas that will be held in the United States.

Lynch said the current charges are “just the beginning,” and that more charges may be forthcoming in the US and overseas. Today Swiss officials announced a separate criminal investigation into FIFA’s decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals to Russia and Qatar.

Back in June, John Oliver explained how unstoppable and how corrupt FIFA was. His explanation touched on the mountains of unchecked money pumped into the organization, but also the human toll.

“Its leader is infallible. It compels South American countries to spend money they don’t have building opulent cathedrals,” Oliver said. “And it may ultimately be responsible to deaths of shocking numbers of people in the Middle East.”