2015 FIFA corruption case

Based on Wikipedia: 2015 FIFA corruption case

The Morning Raid at the Baur au Lac

Just before dawn on May 27, 2015, plainclothes Swiss police officers walked through the gilded lobby of the Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich, one of Europe's most exclusive hotels. They weren't there for the breakfast service. They were there to arrest some of the most powerful men in world football.

Seven officials from the Fédération Internationale de Football Association—better known as FIFA, the organization that governs soccer worldwide—were led away in handcuffs. Some emerged with bedsheets draped over their heads, attempting to shield their faces from the waiting photographers. These men had arrived in Zurich for what should have been a triumphant week: the 65th FIFA Congress, where they would help re-elect their president and celebrate the beautiful game. Instead, they left in police custody, accused of turning that beautiful game into a sprawling criminal enterprise.

The charges? Racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering—the same legal weapons American prosecutors typically deploy against the Mafia.

How American Law Reached Swiss Hotels

You might wonder: what business does the United States have arresting Swiss-based officials of an international sports organization? The answer reveals something fascinating about American legal reach and the surprising vulnerability of global institutions to American prosecution.

The United States is one of only a handful of countries that claims the right to tax its citizens on income earned anywhere in the world. More importantly for this case, American law extends jurisdiction over any financial institution that holds accounts for American citizens—and over any transaction that touches American soil, even tangentially.

Here's how tangentially: in one instance documented in the case, a representative from First Caribbean International Bank in the Bahamas flew to New York City simply to pick up a check for $250,000—allegedly a bribe payment—and transport it back to the recipient's offshore account. That brief touchdown on American soil was enough to bring the entire transaction under American jurisdiction.

This wasn't an accident. American prosecutors had spent years building a case that would leverage these jurisdictional hooks to pierce FIFA's carefully constructed shell of international immunity.

The Man Who Brought Down FIFA

The investigation's most important breakthrough came not from a police raid but from a conversation on a New York sidewalk.

In December 2010, two federal agents—one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the other from the Internal Revenue Service's criminal division—approached a portly American named Chuck Blazer. Blazer was a peculiar figure in world football: a bearded, overweight New Yorker who had somehow risen to become one of the most powerful executives in the sport. He served on FIFA's executive committee and as general secretary of CONCACAF, the regional body governing football in North, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Blazer also hadn't filed personal income tax returns in years—a detail the IRS had noticed.

When the agents confronted Blazer with proof of his tax crimes, he faced a choice: fight the charges and risk years in prison, or cooperate and help bring down his colleagues. He chose cooperation almost immediately.

What followed was remarkable. For years, Blazer attended FIFA meetings around the world while secretly working for the FBI. During the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, he reportedly wore a concealed recording device to meetings with FIFA officials—capturing conversations that would later prove devastating in court. In November 2013, he formally pleaded guilty to ten criminal charges, including wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering. But by then, he had already helped federal investigators map out a sprawling network of corruption that reached from the beaches of Trinidad to the boardrooms of global sports marketing firms.

What They Actually Did

The corruption at the heart of the FIFA case wasn't about match-fixing or doping athletes. It was about something simultaneously more mundane and more lucrative: media rights.

When FIFA or its regional confederations hold a major tournament—the World Cup, the Copa América, the CONCACAF Gold Cup—someone has to broadcast those games. The rights to do so are worth enormous sums. Media companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of showing these matches to viewers around the world.

The scheme worked like this: sports marketing executives would pay bribes to FIFA officials. In exchange, those officials would ensure that the marketing executives won the contracts to distribute media and marketing rights for major tournaments. The bribes were substantial—prosecutors estimated at least $150 million in total, with at least $110 million connected to just one tournament, the Copa América Centenario scheduled for 2016 in the United States.

But it didn't stop at media rights.

The indictment alleged that bribery had infected nearly every aspect of FIFA's operations: the selection of World Cup host countries, the election of FIFA's president, even equipment sponsorship deals. In one striking allegation, an unnamed sports equipment company—identified in press reports as Nike—allegedly paid at least $40 million in bribes to become the sole provider of uniforms, footwear, and equipment to the Brazilian national team.

Think about that for a moment. The Brazilian national team, arguably the most storied and successful squad in football history, wearing their famous yellow jerseys because a company allegedly bribed its way into the contract.

The Vote That Started It All

On December 2, 2010, FIFA's executive committee gathered in Zurich to vote on which countries would host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. The result shocked the football world: Russia won 2018, and Qatar won 2022.

The Qatar decision, in particular, defied logic. Qatar is a tiny Persian Gulf nation, smaller than Connecticut, with virtually no football tradition. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 50 degrees Celsius—122 degrees Fahrenheit—making outdoor sport potentially lethal. The country had never qualified for a World Cup and possessed almost none of the infrastructure needed to host one.

How did Qatar win? Almost immediately, allegations of vote-buying surfaced.

In May 2011, a whistleblower named Phaedra Al-Majid came forward with explosive claims. Al-Majid had worked on Qatar's successful bid team, and she alleged that Qatar had paid $1.5 million to three African football officials—including Issa Hayatou, the president of the Confederation of African Football—to secure their votes.

Then something strange happened.

In July 2011, Al-Majid publicly retracted her claims, saying she had fabricated them for media attention. The story seemed to die. But in November 2014, she emerged again with a different account: she had been coerced into retracting her allegations, she said, because she feared for her safety and lacked legal representation.

By June 2015, Al-Majid was in FBI protective custody. "The FBI have everything," she told reporters. "There are people who are annoyed with me for speaking out, and what really irks them is that I'm a female, Muslim whistleblower."

The South African Connection

The Qatar vote wasn't the first World Cup selection tainted by bribery allegations. The 2010 World Cup in South Africa—the first ever held on African soil, a genuinely historic moment for the sport—was allegedly secured through a $10 million payment that prosecutors called a bribe.

The money trail is instructive. According to court documents, FIFA's general secretary Jérôme Valcke transferred $10 million from FIFA accounts to accounts controlled by Jack Warner, then the head of CONCACAF. The money had been provided by Danny Jordaan, president of the South African Football Association, and was supposedly intended to support football development in the Caribbean.

That's not where it went.

Prosecutors documented that $1.6 million of the payment went directly to pay Warner's personal loans and credit cards. Another $360,000 was withdrawn by people connected to Warner. And in a detail that captures the almost cartoonish nature of the corruption, $4.86 million ended up at JTA Supermarkets—a Trinidadian grocery store chain with connections to Warner.

Nearly five million dollars, intended for Caribbean football development, spent on groceries.

The Racketeering Approach

Notably, the Department of Justice did not charge anyone at FIFA with bribery itself. Instead, prosecutors deployed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—universally known as RICO—a law originally designed to dismantle the Mafia.

This wasn't a limitation; it was a strategic choice.

RICO allows prosecutors to charge individuals not just for specific criminal acts but for participating in a pattern of criminal activity as part of an ongoing enterprise. It's the legal equivalent of going after the organization itself, not just the individuals who happen to get caught.

Prosecutors also relied heavily on the Travel Act, a 1961 law that makes it illegal to use interstate or foreign travel, the mail, or "any facility in interstate commerce" to promote, manage, or carry on illegal activity. Under this law, something as simple as sending an email through American servers or making a phone call that routes through American infrastructure can bring a transaction under American jurisdiction.

The message to international organizations was clear: if your corruption touches America in any way—even through a wire transfer or a connecting flight—American prosecutors can reach you.

The Cast of Characters

The individuals eventually indicted read like a who's who of international football administration.

Jeffrey Webb was perhaps the most prominent. A citizen of the Cayman Islands, Webb had risen to become president of CONCACAF and a vice president of FIFA itself—positions that made him one of the most powerful figures in the sport. He was arrested at the Baur au Lac during that May 2015 raid.

Jack Warner, the former CONCACAF president from Trinidad and Tobago, was the investigation's primary target. Warner had been a FIFA powerbroker for decades, and the evidence against him was extensive. After the initial arrests, he turned himself in to police in Trinidad, only to be released on bail. He fought extradition to the United States for years.

Nicolás Leoz, the former president of CONMEBOL (the South American football confederation), was also indicted. Leoz had led South American football for over two decades and served on FIFA's executive committee. He died in 2019, still fighting extradition.

Eduardo Li, the president of the Costa Rican Football Federation, was arrested alongside Webb. Eugenio Figueredo, a Uruguayan-American dual citizen and former CONMEBOL president, was also taken into custody. The list went on: businessmen, marketing executives, football administrators from across the Americas.

In total, eighteen individuals and two corporations were indicted.

The Ripple Effects

The American arrests triggered a cascade of investigations worldwide. Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, and Switzerland all opened or intensified their own criminal inquiries into FIFA officials.

The Swiss investigation proved particularly important. On the same day as the American arrests, Swiss prosecutors launched their own criminal inquiry into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding processes, citing "suspicion of criminal mismanagement and of money laundering." They raided FIFA's headquarters in Zurich, seizing electronic data and documents, and planned to question ten members of the FIFA executive committee who had voted on those controversial bids.

In September 2015, Swiss authorities opened a new investigation—this one targeting Sepp Blatter himself.

The Fall of Sepp Blatter

Joseph "Sepp" Blatter had been president of FIFA since 1998. A Swiss former amateur footballer, Blatter had spent his entire career in sports administration, joining FIFA in 1975 and working his way to the top over two decades. By 2015, he had won four presidential elections and exercised near-total control over the organization.

Just four days after the Zurich arrests, Blatter won a fifth term as FIFA president when his challenger, Jordanian Prince Ali bin Hussein, withdrew before a decisive second round of voting. It seemed, briefly, as though Blatter might survive the scandal.

He didn't.

On June 2, 2015—less than a week after his re-election—Blatter announced he would resign as soon as a new election could be organized. He cited the need for "profound restructuring" of FIFA, though he continued to deny personal wrongdoing.

The Swiss investigation soon complicated his departure. Prosecutors began examining a 2011 payment that Blatter had authorized from FIFA funds to Michel Platini, the French football legend who then served as president of UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations. The payment was two million Swiss francs, allegedly for consulting work Platini had done between 1999 and 2002—compensation mysteriously paid nine years after the work was supposedly completed.

In December 2015, FIFA's ethics committee banned both Blatter and Platini from all football-related activities for eight years. In November 2021, Swiss prosecutors charged both men with fraud related to that suspicious payment.

Blatter's fall revealed something else troubling. Swiss public television reported that Blatter had sold the North American television rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups for just $600,000—a small fraction of their market value. Whether this represented incompetence or corruption remained unclear, but it suggested that the problems at FIFA ran far deeper than a few individuals taking bribes.

The Journalist Who Wouldn't Stop

The FBI's investigation might never have happened without Andrew Jennings, a British investigative journalist who had been documenting FIFA corruption for over a decade.

In 2002, a FIFA whistleblower contacted Jennings with allegations of corruption within the organization. Jennings began investigating, and in 2006, Swiss magistrate Thomas Hildbrand seized documents from FIFA offices based partly on Jennings's reporting. In 2007, Jennings published Foul!, a book-length exposé, and broadcast a BBC Panorama documentary called "The Beautiful Bung: Corruption and the World Cup."

The BBC aired another Jennings documentary later that year, containing an allegation that Jack Warner had solicited bribes and documenting a court judgment that Jérôme Valcke had lied in FIFA business dealings.

These reports led the FBI to contact Jennings in 2009. The bureau wanted to know everything he knew about FIFA. Jennings, who had been shouting about corruption from the wilderness for years while football authorities ignored him, was happy to share.

In November 2010—just days before FIFA voted on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts—the BBC broadcast yet another Jennings documentary, FIFA's Dirty Secrets. By then, American prosecutors had already begun building their case.

An Unlikely Intelligence Asset

The investigation received help from an unexpected source: a former British spy.

Christopher Steele had worked for MI6, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, specializing in Russia. After leaving government service, he founded a private intelligence firm called Orbis Business Intelligence. In 2011, Steele began providing information and sources to the FBI that helped advance the FIFA investigation.

Steele would later become famous for entirely different reasons—he authored the controversial "dossier" about Donald Trump and Russia during the 2016 American presidential campaign. But his earlier work on FIFA demonstrated the strange intersections between geopolitics, sports, and intelligence that characterized the case.

What Changed—And What Didn't

The 2015 arrests represented an unprecedented intervention in international sports governance. Never before had American law enforcement so aggressively targeted officials of a global sports organization. The message was unmistakable: the days when international sports bodies could operate as laws unto themselves were over.

Or were they?

The 2018 World Cup proceeded in Russia as planned, despite the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and calls from British and American politicians to strip Russia of the hosting rights. The 2022 World Cup went forward in Qatar, rescheduled to winter months to avoid the deadly summer heat, but otherwise unchanged despite years of controversy over the bid's legitimacy and the country's human rights record.

Many of the indicted officials fought extradition for years. Some died before facing trial. Others pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors, receiving reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony. The investigations continued, expanding to encompass ever more transactions and individuals, but FIFA itself survived.

In February 2016, FIFA elected Gianni Infantino, a Swiss-Italian administrator, as its new president. Infantino promised reform but soon faced ethics inquiries of his own. The organization instituted new governance procedures, but fundamental questions about accountability and transparency remained.

The beautiful game, it turned out, was harder to clean up than anyone had imagined.

The Larger Lesson

The FIFA corruption case illuminated something beyond football. It revealed how international organizations can develop their own internal cultures, ones where bribery becomes normalized and oversight becomes impossible. It showed how money—enormous, almost incomprehensible amounts of money—can corrupt institutions that began with idealistic purposes.

And it demonstrated the strange power of American law, which can reach across oceans and borders to hold foreign nationals accountable for crimes committed on foreign soil, as long as some thread connects back to American jurisdiction.

The case also raised uncomfortable questions. If FIFA was this corrupt, what about other international sports bodies? What about the International Olympic Committee? What about non-sports organizations—the countless international bodies that regulate trade, telecommunications, aviation, and finance?

The FIFA arrests didn't answer these questions. But they suggested that the gap between the clean, official narratives of international organizations and their actual operations might be larger than most people assumed.

In the end, the morning raid at the Baur au Lac wasn't just about football. It was about what happens when power operates without accountability, when money flows without transparency, and when the people who are supposed to govern an institution decide instead to pillage it.

The beautiful game deserved better. Perhaps now it has a chance to become what it always claimed to be.