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FIFA Arrests

sydmariner

Well-Known Member
Last edited:

Blackadder

Well-Known Member
So, these arrests at FIFA come at a times they are electing the next Preisdent and Sepp Blatter isn't arrested. A cynical person could think it's a tip off from the Blatter camp to remove a few rivals.
 

VicMariner

Well-Known Member
So, these arrests at FIFA come at a times they are electing the next Preisdent and Sepp Blatter isn't arrested. A cynical person could think it's a tip off from the Blatter camp to remove a few rivals.
I'd say it's an investigation that has been running for some time.
The Americans must have a pretty strong case to move against these powerful, influential people.
There may be more arrests to come...
Here is an interesting article from November 2014:
Chuck Blazer secretly recording conversations with football officials for the FBI. Frank Lowy was one of them.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/s...-chuck-blazer-fbi-informant-article-1.1995761
 

midfielder

Well-Known Member
I am glad this has happened... wonders given the current state of play between the US and the especially the US if awarding the WC to Russia and to a Gulf State was important in funding the investigation..
 

nearlyyellow

Well-Known Member
This is pretty serious sh*t, and the corrupt officials and those who harbour them deserve to be dealt with by the law. But, is all that it seems? Here's an article by a very well credentialled bloke, Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard. who presents some compelling arguments that there may be more to the US legal action than meets the eye, which view I tend to subscribe to.

In the FIFA case, is the US mounting a takeover of international soccer?
Date May 28, 2015 - 11:44PM

A US law designed to prosecute crime syndicates will be tested in the case of the seven FIFA officials detained pending extradition to the US.
    • 1432820671937.jpg

      FIFA president Sepp Blatter.It wasn't exactly extraordinary rendition. But when Swiss police arrested seven officials of FIFA, the international football federation, for extradition to the United States, there were some echoes of the secret terrorism arrests. Soccer is a global game, and it matters more to almost everyone than to Americans. So why is the US acting as the international sheriff and grabbing up non-US citizens to try them domestically for corrupting the sport worldwide? And, more to the point, why is this legal?

      In effect, the US government is saying that FIFA became the Mafia.

      It turns out the legal basis for the FIFA prosecutions isn't all that simple or straightforward – and therein lies a tale of politics and sport. The prosecutions are being brought under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act of 1970, which was designed to prosecute crime syndicates that had taken over otherwise lawful organisations. Roughly speaking, the law works by allowing the government to prove that a defendant participated in a criminal organisation and also committed at least two criminal acts under other specified laws, including bribery and wire fraud. If the government can prove that, the defendant is guilty of racketeering and qualifies for stiff sentences, the seizure of assets and potential civil-liability lawsuits.

      The first and most obvious problem raised by the FIFA arrests is whether the RICO law applies outside the US, or "extraterritorially" as lawyers like to say. Generally, as the US Supreme Court has recently emphasised, laws passed by Congress don't apply outside the US unless Congress affirmatively says so. RICO on its face says nothing about applying beyond US borders. So you'd think it can't reach conduct that occurred abroad, and much of the alleged FIFA criminal conduct appears to have done so.

      But in 2014 the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that RICO could apply extraterritorially – if, and only if, the separate criminal acts required by the law, known as "predicate acts", violated statutes that themselves apply outside US borders. The court gave as an example the law that criminalises killing an American national outside the US. That law clearly applies abroad, the court pointed out. And it may function to define one of the predicate offences under RICO. Thus, RICO can apply abroad.

      To convict the FIFA defendants, therefore, the Department of Justice will have to prove either that they committed crimes within the US or that they committed predicate crimes covered by RICO that reach beyond US borders.

      Presumably the department thinks it has the evidence to do this. When the arrests became public, the government also announced that it had guilty pleas from four individuals and two corporate defendants who are part of the same enterprise, as defined by the government's indictment. These defendants almost certainly must have agreed to testify against the others in exchange for lighter sentences.

      But what's most remarkable, and even incendiary, about the indictment comes in the fine print. RICO requires the existence of a criminal enterprise. As part of its case, the US Department of Justice is alleging that FIFA, the organiser of the World Cup, became a criminal enterprise as a result of its use of systematic corruption. In effect, the US government is saying that FIFA became the Mafia.

      The US government acknowledges that the original purpose of FIFA is the perfectly legitimate goal of regulating international soccer. Its claim is that FIFA – as well as Concacaf, the North American soccer body that has its headquarters in Miami – took bribes from sports marketing companies to give them access to the tournaments that are the main source of revenue for the organisations. The sports marketing companies were the intermediaries who sold tournament rights to television and radio broadcasters and to advertisers. In a process going back to 1991, the government alleges, the defendants "corrupted the enterprise," transforming FIFA into a criminal entity.

      How will the rest of the world react to the claim that soccer's international governing body is a criminal enterprise under US law? One possibility is that international observers will be grateful that someone finally stepped in to do something about endemic corruption within FIFA. It's been a more or less open secret over the years that FIFA was corrupt in the ordinary, nontechnical meaning of the word. Perhaps – just perhaps – fans will be pleased or relieved that someone has taken on the task of cleaning up the mess.

      That interpretation is optimistic, given America's reputation for extraterritorial imperialism. The relative unimportance of soccer in the US compared with every place else on Earth makes concerns about imperialism still more pressing. Through creative and aggressive use of a highly unusual American law, the US may well be seen as attempting a takeover of international soccer.

      The Department of Justice is entitled to prosecute crimes under its jurisdiction. But that doesn't mean it always should. There's no doubt that FIFA needed to be cleaned up. But it's far from clear that US global interests are served by doing it the American way – with courts and long prison terms.

      (Article is here: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/in-th...-of-international-soccer-20150528-ghbc0e.html)
 

dibo

Well-Known Member
I'm surprised that he contests the notion that FIFA is an otherwise legal enterprise that has become criminal.
 

VicMariner

Well-Known Member
FIFA is thoroughly corrupt and needs a drastic clean out but I can't see the US taking over global football administration. They would have to get the 200 odd members to get on board and I can't imagine that powerful UEFA and CONMEBOL would agree. Where those two go the rest will have to follow. In fact UEFA by itself is probably influential enough to take the lead.
I can't see either bowing to a football middleweight like the US.
 

dibo

Well-Known Member
FIFA is thoroughly corrupt and needs a drastic clean out but I can't see the US taking over global football administration. They would have to get the 200 odd members to get on board and I can't imagine that powerful UEFA and CONMEBOL would agree. Where those two go the rest will have to follow. In fact UEFA by itself is probably influential enough to take the lead.
I can't see either bowing to a football middleweight like the US.
It's not the US Soccer Federation doing this.

It's the FBI, led by the US Department of Justice, headed by the Attorney-General who was hand-picked by the President of the USA. Oh, and her last job was as US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY, where one of her key matters was (you'll never guess) investigating FIFA.

Who are some of FIFA's biggest sponsors? McDonalds, Coca Cola, Visa, Anheuser-Busch...

If those companies think dealing with FIFA means they're going to cop some of the blood splatter as this all goes down, they are going to head for the hills.

FIFA (corrupt or no) is nothing without the commercial empire that comes with running the greatest game of all. If the commercial empire withers, the grasp that the corrupt, the grafters and the shonks have over those that rely on their patronage goes to dust.
 

VicMariner

Well-Known Member
It's not the US Soccer Federation doing this.
Didn't think it was.
I was just responding to the article that NY posted. It just said "the US". It did not really spell out who in the US wants to take over football.
All sounds a bit conspiracy theory to me. I can't imagine any who would want to and they would not succeed if they tried.
 

nearlyyellow

Well-Known Member
Extraordinary, simply extraordinary! o_O Blatter has just been re-elected as President of FIFA for a record 5th. term. It looks like the endemic corruption goes right to the voting core of FIFA. Maybe time a new governing body is formed?
 

nearlyyellow

Well-Known Member
http://www.smh.com.au/world/fifa-sc...in-of-american-imagining-20150529-ghclt3.html

" .. American authorities claim jurisdiction for their attack on alleged corruption in FIFA based on the fact that alleged crimes were committed via the US banking system. But that is not necessarily why they launched the investigation. .. "

" ..
Perhaps the US interest was best explained in a piece written by Andres Martinez, a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. He argues that the soccer world should look at the United States the way the US looks at China in the economic context: "A relentless giant inevitably bound to take over."

"Just look at the numbers," he writes. "Last year's World Cup final in Brazil between Argentina and Germany was watched by an estimated 26.5 million people in the United States. That number dwarfs the 15.5 million viewers for the 2014 NBA Finals, or the 14.9 million viewers for the final game of the World Series the previous year.

"The average viewership for all 64 World Cup matches was up 39 per cent over 2010 on ESPN. Just imagine what will happen the day the US team makes the World Cup final."

Even if many Americans are ambivalent about the sport they still call soccer, it is not hard to see why US authorities felt they had the means, the motive and the opportunity to act. .. "
 

dibo

Well-Known Member
"means, motive and opportunity" is a phrase usually used to describe someone committing a crime.
 

nearlyyellow

Well-Known Member
someone committing a crime
I guess that's why the FBI has issued the warrants? I suspect that no matter what Blatter pontificates, it is not going to end well for him and his cronies, nor probably for FIFA.

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/...-fifa-corruption-scandal-20150530-ghdbmg.html

" .. The former director-general of the BBC said that Mr Blatter's failure to win the support of football's two most influential continents was indicative of his vulnerable position.
"What is interesting, so I am told, is that most of Europe voted against him and all of Latin America voted against him, so if it's true that means the two biggest football continents said 'we don't want you, Mr Blatter'. And those are the two continents that are the World Cup," he said.

"Only the smaller countries would have voted for him because they rely totally on FIFA for their income. We, at the FA, we don't need FIFA. We don't need them at all. We can say what we like. And I understand he is now saying 'I forgive, but don't forget.' Well, let me tell him back, we neither forgive nor forget either .. "


If you think FIFA will survive here's another little bombshell from that article:

" .. It has emerged that US prosecutors are examining Nike's involvement in the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil as part of their investigations into corruption.
Nike paid the Brazilian football association $160 million over 10 years as a co-sponsor and exclusive provider of boots and uniforms.

The US Justice Department's 164-page indictment, issued last week, is understood to allege that the sportswear company then made a separate payment of $40 million that was not part of the contract. Questions are now being asked as to whether US-based sponsors, such as Nike, Coca-Cola and McDonald's, will be allowed to continue funding FIFA while it remains an organisation under investigation for corrupt practices.

There is speculation that such funding would be illegal under the US's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is aimed at preventing the bribery of foreign officials.

If such a major source of sponsorship funding was stopped it would effectively cripple FIFA. There is also speculation that similar legislation in Britain may have an impact on UK-based sponsors. .. "


¯\_(ツ)_/¯


 

nearlyyellow

Well-Known Member
The phrasing was about the FBI having means, motive and opportunity rather than FIFA, hence my confusion.
I read it as just poorly worded by the journos, and that the arrested persons had the " means, motive and opportunity" thus prompting the FBI into action. :)'s But I get your differing interpretation.
 

nearlyyellow

Well-Known Member
So, the deluded old man, the "president of everybody" is going to resign, and the FBI is going after him.
Vous obtenez ce que vous méritez, et c'est ainsi que cela devrait être, monsieur le Président Blatter.
 

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