Report: Top FIFA Officials Arrested, to Be Charged With Corruption
According to The New York Times, Swiss authorities in Zurich* have arrested several top FIFA officials in a dramatic early-morning raid connected to federal corruption charges soon to be filed in the United States.
The Times reports that FIFA vice presidents Jeffrey Webb and Eugenio Figueredo and former vice president Jack Warner are among the officials expected to be charged, but not FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
Citing law enforcement sources, CNN reports that as many as 14 people in all will be charged Wednesday, the result of a three-year FBI investigation into the world governing body of soccer long plagued by accusations of bribery. From The Wall Street Journal:
Investigators reached a turning point in their probe in 2011 when an American member of the FIFA Executive Committee, Charles “Chuck” Blazer, began cooperating with them, one of the people said. Mr. Blazer, a Queens, N.Y., native, began providing FBI agents with information about alleged fraud and money laundering within FIFA’s ranks, according to [a person familiar with the matter].
Mr. Blazer, who from 1990 to 2011 was the general secretary of the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, or Concacaf, agreed to record conversations with other FIFA executives after authorities threatened to bring tax evasion charges against him, the person said.
In 2013, FIFA hired former U.S. attorney Michael J. Garcia as an independent investigator to look into widespread allegations of corruption in the bidding process that awarded Russia and Qatar the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
In November of last year, FIFA announced the investigation was closed and no serious wrongdoing had been found, but Garcia immediately disputed that summary of his findings, alleging it contained “numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions.”
UPDATE 1:45 a.m.: According to the Associated Press, the charges involve “millions” in suspected bribes.
BREAKING: Swiss authorities: 6 soccer officials arrested, suspected of getting, paying millions in bribes
May 27, 2015
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