Η εφημερίδα αναφέρει ότι οι αξιωματούχοι είναι ύποπτοι για διαφθορά, εκβιασμούς, απάτη και ξέπλυμα χρήματος και αντιμετωπίζουν το ενδεχόμενο να εκδοθούν στις ΗΠΑ.
Τα στελέχη της Παγκόσμιας Ποδοσφαιρικής Ομοσπονδίας βρίσκονται στη Ζυρίχη για το ετήσιο συνέδριο και την Παρασκευή καλούνται να εκλέξουν νέο πρόεδρο.
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FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S.
ZURICH
— Swiss authorities conducted an extraordinary early-morning operation
here Wednesday to arrest several top soccer officials and extradite them
to the United States on federal corruption charges.
As
leaders of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, gathered for their
annual meeting, more than a dozen plain-clothed Swiss law enforcement
officials arrived unannounced at the Baur au Lac hotel, an elegant
five-star property with views of the Alps and Lake Zurich. They went to
the front desk to get keys and proceeded upstairs to the rooms.
The
arrests were carried out peacefully, with at least two men being
ushered out of the hotel without handcuffs. One FIFA official, Eduardo
Li of Costa Rica, was led by the authorities from his room to a
side-door exit of the hotel. He was allowed to bring his luggage, which
was adorned with FIFA logos.The charges allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two
decades, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and
broadcast deals, according to three law enforcement officials with
direct knowledge of the case. The charges include wire fraud,
racketeering and money laundering, and officials said they targeted
members of FIFA’s powerful executive committee, which wields enormous
power and does its business largely in secret.
The
arrests were a startling blow to FIFA, a multibillion-dollar
organization that governs the world’s most popular sport but has been
plagued by accusations of bribery for decades.
The
inquiry is also a major threat to Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s longtime
president who is generally recognized as the most powerful person in
sports, though he was not charged. An election, seemingly pre-ordained
to give him a fifth term as president, is scheduled for Friday.
Prosecutors
planned to unseal an indictment against more than 10 officials, not all
of whom are in Zurich, law enforcement officials said. Among them are
Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, a vice president of the executive
committee; Eugenio Figueredo of Uruguay, who is also an executive
committee vice president and until recently was the president of South
America’s soccer association; and Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, a
former member of the executive committee who has been accused of
numerous ethical violations.
“We’re
struck by just how long this went on for and how it touched nearly
every part of what FIFA did,” said a law enforcement official. “It just
seemed to permeate every element of the federation and was just their
way of doing business. It seems like this corruption was
institutionalized.”
The Justice Department, the F.B.I. and FIFA did not have any immediate comment.
The
case is the most significant yet for United States Attorney General
Loretta E. Lynch, who took office last month. She previously served as
the United States attorney in Brooklyn, where she supervised the FIFA
investigation. Ms. Lynch and F.B.I. Director James Comey were expected
to hold a news conference on Wednesday morning in New York.
With
more than $1.5 billion in reserves, FIFA is as much a global financial
conglomerate as a sports organization. With countries around the world
competing aggressively to win the bid to host the World Cup, Mr. Blatter
has commanded the fealty of anyone who wanted a piece of that revenue
stream. He and FIFA have weathered corruption controversies in the past,
but none involved charges of federal crimes in United States court.
United
States law gives the Justice Department wide authority to bring cases
against foreign nationals living abroad, an authority that prosecutors
have used repeatedly in international terrorism cases. Those cases can
hinge on the slightest connection to the United States, like the use of
an American bank or Internet service provider.
.
Switzerland’s
treaty with the United States is unusual in that it gives Swiss
authorities the power to refuse extradition for tax crimes, but on
matters of general criminal law, the Swiss have agreed to turn people
over for prosecution in American courts.
The
case further mars the reputation of FIFA’s leader, Mr. Blatter, who has
for years acted as a de facto head of state. Politicians, star players,
national soccer officials and global corporations that want their
brands attached to the sport have long genuflected before him.
Critics
of FIFA point to the lack of transparency regarding executive salaries
and resource allocations for an organization that, by its own admission,
had revenue of $5.7 billion from 2011 to 2014. Policy decisions are
also often taken without debate or explanation, and a small group of
officials — known as the executive committee — operates with outsize
power. FIFA has for years operated with little oversight and even less
transparency. Alexandra Wrage, a governance consultant who once
unsuccessfully attempted to help overhaul FIFA’s methods, famously
labeled the organization “byzantine and impenetrable.
Law
enforcement officials said much of the inquiry involves Concacaf, one
of the six regional confederations that compose FIFA. Concacaf — which
stands for Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean
Association Football — includes major countries like the United States
and Mexico, and also tiny ones like Barbados and Montserrat.
Concacaf
was led from 1990 to 2011 by Mr. Warner, the longtime head of Trinidad
& Tobago’s federation. A key powerbroker in FIFA’s governing
executive committee, Mr. Warner had been dogged by accusations of
corruption. He was accused of illegally profiting from the resale of
tickets to the 2006 World Cup, and of withholding the bonuses of the
Trinidad players who participated in that tournament.
Mr.
Warner resigned his positions in FIFA, Concacaf and his national
association in 2011 amid mounting evidence that he had been part of an
attempt to buy the votes of Caribbean federation officials in the 2010
FIFA presidential election. A 2013 Concacaf report also found that he had received tens of millions of dollars in misappropriated funds.
But
according to the rules of FIFA at the time, Mr. Warner’s resignation
led to the immediate closure of all ethics committee cases against him.
“The presumption of innocence is maintained,” FIFA said in a short
statement announcing his departure.
No
recent incident better encapsulated FIFA’s unusual power dynamic than
the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, which many
observers found to be flawed from the start: the decision to award two
tournaments at once, critics said, would invite vote-trading and other
inducements.
Since
only the 24 members of the executive committee would decide on the
hosts, persuading even a few of them might be enough to swing the vote.
Even before the vote took place, two committee members — Amos Adamu of
Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti — were suspended after an
investigation by The Sunday Times caught both men on tape asking for
payments in exchange for their support. It was later revealed by
England’s bid chief that four ExCo members had solicited bribes from him
for their votes; one asked for $2.5 million, while another, Nicolas
Leoz of Paraguay, requested a knighthood.
As new accounts of bribery continued to emerge — a whistleblower who worked for the Qatar bid team claimed that several African officials were paid $1.5 million each to support Qatar
— FIFA in 2012 started an investigation of the bid process. It was led
by a former United States attorney, Michael J. Garcia, who spent nearly
two years compiling a report. That report, however, has never been made
public; instead, the top judge on the ethics committee, the German
Joachim Eckert, released a summary of the report. In it, he declared
that while violations of the code of ethics had occurred, they had not affected the integrity of the vote.
Within
hours, Garcia had criticised Eckert’s summary as incorrect and
incomplete, charging that it contained “numerous materially incomplete
and erroneous representations of the facts.” Nonetheless, FIFA moved quickly to embrace
the report’s absolution of the bid process. Qatar World Cup officials
said the review had upheld “the integrity and quality of our bid,” And
Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, told reporters, “I hope we will
not have talk about this again.”
Michael S. Schmidt and Sam Borden reported from Zurich; Matt Apuzzo from Washington; and William K. Rashbaum from New York.
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