[The Department of Justice indictment names 14 people on charges
including racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. In addition
to senior soccer officials, the indictment also named sports-marketing
executives from the United States and South America who are accused of paying
more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for media deals
associated with major soccer tournaments.]
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FIFA
officials were escorted out behind sheets at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich.
Credit
Pascal Mora for The New York Times
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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 room numbers and then proceeded upstairs.
The arrests were carried out peacefully. 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, backed by an F.B.I.
investigation, allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades,
involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals.
Several hours after the soccer officials were apprehended at the
hotel, Swiss authorities said they had opened criminal cases related to the
bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups — incidents that, more than any others,
encapsulated FIFA’s unusual power dynamic. “In the course of said proceedings,” the Swiss officials said, “electronic data and
documents were seized today at FIFA’s head office in Zurich.”
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. Blatter 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.
An election, seemingly pre-ordained to give Mr. Blatter a fifth
term as president, is scheduled for Friday. A FIFA spokesman insisted at the
news conference that Mr. Blatter was not involved in any alleged wrongdoing and
that the election would go ahead as planned.
The Department of Justice indictment names 14 people on charges
including racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. In addition
to senior soccer officials, the indictment also named sports-marketing
executives from the United States and South America who are accused of paying
more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for media deals
associated with major soccer tournaments.
The soccer officials charged are Mr. Li, Jeffrey Webb, Eugenio
Figueredo, Jack Warner, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Rafael Esquivel, José Maria
Marin and Nicolás Leoz.
“FIFA welcomes actions that can help contribute to rooting out
any wrongdoing in football,” the organization said in a statement.
Charges were also made against the sports-marketing executives
Alejandro Burzaco, Aaron Davidson, Hugo Jinkis and Mariano Jinkis. Authorities
also charged José Margulies as an intermediary who facilitated illegal
payments.
“The indictment alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic,
and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States,” said United States
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch.
United States officials also revealed that four people,
including the former FIFA executive Chuck Blazer, and two sports marketing
companies had entered guilty pleas. Blazer forfeited $1.9 million when he
entered his guilty plea in 2013, and agreed to make a second payment at
sentencing.
The case is the most significant yet for Ms. 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 scheduled to hold a news conference at 10:30 a.m.
Wednesday morning in Brooklyn.
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.
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 functioned with little oversight and even less transparency.
Alexandra Wrage, a governance consultant who once unsuccessfully attempted to
help overhaul FIFA’s methods, 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.
According to the indictment, several international soccer events
were tainted by bribes and kickbacks involving media and marketing rights:
World Cup qualifiers in the Concacaf region; the Gold Cup, a regional
championship tournament; the Concacaf Champions League; the Copa América; and
the South American club championship, the Copa Libertadores. The indictment
also claims that bribes and kickbacks were found in connection with the
selection of the host country for the 2010 World Cup.
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 2011 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.
Many critics found the bid process for the 2018 and 2022 World
Cups to be flawed from the start: the decision to award two tournaments at
once, they 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.”
The issue was, in fact, raised against Wednesday. When pressed
by reporters at the news conference, Mr. de Gregorio repeatedly said that FIFA
would not consider reopening the bid process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Michael S. Schmidt and Sam Borden reported from Zurich; Matt
Apuzzo from Washington; and William K. Rashbaum from New York.
