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. 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, according to three law enforcement officials with direct
knowledge of the case.
The indictment names 14 people on
charges including racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. In
addition to senior soccer officials, the indictment is also expected to name
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, according to one
government official briefed on the matter.
The law enforcement official said
the soccer officials charged are Jeffrey Webb, Eugenio Figueredo, Jack Warner,
Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Rafael Esquivel, José Maria Marin and
Nicolás Leoz.
Charges were also expected
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.
“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 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. He 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.
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.
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, 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.
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; the Concacaf Champions League; the Copa América; and 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 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.
Several hours after the United
States Department of Justice indictment was disclosed, 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.”
Many observers found the bid process
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.”
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