The largest scandal in modern sports history. Earlier this week, nine high-ranking soccer officials, including two current vice presidents of soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, were indicted along with five sports marketing executives on federal corruption charges by the U.S. Justice Department. Early on Wednesday, Swiss authorities made a series of arrests at a five-star hotel at the request of the the U.S. authorities.
Among those arrested in connection with the probe is Jack Warner, former vice president of FIFA, who is accused of taking a $10 million bribe to cast his ballot for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the corruption dates back to at least 1991.
Despite the arrests, FIFA is holding an election today to pick the next president of the organization. FIFA President Sepp Blatter is seeking re-election for the post he has held since 1998. Many commentators have predicted he will be re-elected, though some nations, including the United States, have vowed to vote against him. Earlier today, protesters in Zurich called for Blatter to step down.
This week’s FIFA arrests are just the latest scandal within the international soccer community. FIFA has also come under criticism for selecting Qatar to host the 2022 games despite the country’s poor human rights record. According to the International Trade Union Confederation, 1,200 migrant workers have died since the World Cup was awarded in 2010.
Dave Zirin talking:
The only thing that is surprising here is that we’re now dealing with charges that have actual teeth. That’s the only surprise. I mean, we are talking about the Enron of sports and a hubris and arrogance that is bringing down a multibillion-dollar corporation. The only difference between FIFA and Enron is that FIFA has been designated a nonprofit by the Swiss government, which makes looking at its books and finding the extent of the corruption all the more difficult.
why people would look at the U.S. Justice Department and say, “Why can’t they be this aggressive towards the Wall Street bankers? Why can’t they be this aggressive towards police brutality?” And those viewers are absolutely correct. But people should also realize that this is a day that people should celebrate, because it is crippling one of the most corrupt multinationals that we have, sports or otherwise.
Sepp Blatter, he has been in charge of FIFA for 17 years. The thing about Sepp Blatter that distinguishes him from the people who were indicted is that Sepp Blatter uses his power and influence to attain more power. He’s less interested in personal enrichment than he is in influence, and this is what has allowed him to remain free of prison these last many years. Although Sepp Blatter is also—he will not get off a plane in the United States, for fear that he will be arrested. That is true. There are also people saying that he might not attend the Women’s World Cup in Canada, for fear that he might be arrested. So, you’re talking about somebody who is effectively a stateless actor, somebody who is under investigation, who will probably be re-elected for a fifth term to head FIFA.
The U.S. Justice Department is going after FIFA very simply because the U.S. was not awarded the 2022 World Cup. If they had been, I don’t think this investigation would be taking place. And also let’s keep in mind that the Justice Department has only gone after, at this point, a small part of the world—North America, Central America, these confederations. What it says to us is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and if some of these FIFA vice presidents begin to talk, begin to flip, if you will, to use Mafia parlance, what we could be looking at is the bringing down of Sepp Blatter and perhaps the beginning of the end of FIFA itself.
Clinton Foundation received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Qatari World Cup Committee when Bill Clinton was serving as the U.S. World Cup delegate with the U.S. World Cup delegation.
Not only has the Clinton Foundation received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Qatar World Cup Committee, it has also received millions of dollars from the Qatari government over the last several years. And the Clintons are going to have to answer this question, because, as you said in the intro, the Qatari World Cup construction has an absolutely monstrous body count—1,200 deaths—slavery, and even the prevention of Nepalese migrant workers of going home to Nepal after the recent earthquake to go to funerals for members of their family. Now, there is this lore that’s out there in the media that Bill Clinton was so angry after the U.S. did not get the World Cup bid for 2022, he broke a mirror, and that signaled that the United States was going to get serious about corruption in the World Cup. This is mainstream media hooey. What you see much more clearly is a very bizarre, very unexplained connection between the Qatari royal family, the Qatari World Cup bid and the Clinton Foundation, which allegedly was to facilitate less labor abuses, when in reality we have not seen that at all.
Despite Qatar’s promises to improve conditions, Nepali migrants have died at a rate of one every two days in 2014 in Qatar. that blood is on Sepp Blatter’s hands, as well. Even though, ironically, Sepp Blatter was not in favor of the Qatari bid, he has said that this World Cup will go on in 2022, quote-unquote, “over his dead body”—that’s his words—even though it’s 125 degrees during the summer in Qatar, even though they’re going to have to have the World Cup in 2022 in the fall, which will effectively cut into, if not completely reorganize, the European soccer leagues, which are the world’s most popular. And that’s why I think 2022, if Blatter is re-elected and if we have a situation where he’s not imprisoned, where we could be looking at the crack-up of FIFA in the years to come, because the splits are really profound. And the splits are unclear. Voting against Blatter today will not only be the United States, as you mentioned, but also the Palestinian Football Association. So, if Blatter and FIFA have done nothing else, they have brought the interests of Palestine and the interests of the United States together for once.
It would be the first time since apartheid South Africa that a country was asked to leave FIFA because of its practices. But this news is changing as I’m speaking to you. There are negotiations going on. Israel, from what I hear from news reports, is already relenting on what has been a blockade preventing players in Gaza from traveling freely to the West Bank. And that’s what the Palestinian Football Association is charging Israel with. They’re saying they are choking out their ability to develop soccer because of the way that they get in the way of free movement of players, free movement of coaches. And perhaps the most damning accusation towards the Israeli Football Association is that they have created and formed five or six, depending on reports, clubs in the Occupied Territories, in the settlements of the West Bank, so it’s Israeli Football Association using soccer as a way to take land that should rightfully be part of a possible Palestinian state. And they’re saying that the Israeli Football Association should be removed from FIFA unless they agree to cease these practices. And there are furious negotiations going on, as we speak, to try to head that off.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “With regard to the arrests that have been made, it looks very strange, to say the least, because the arrests have been made at the request of the American side on charges of corruption. And who were charged? International officials. We can assume that some of them may have violated something. I don’t know. But it’s clear that the U.S. has nothing to do with that anyway. Those officials are not U.S. citizens. And if some event indeed happened, and it happened not on the United States territory, and the U.S. has nothing to do with that, this is yet another blatant attempt to extend its jurisdiction to other states.”
Vladimir Putin will also be having to answer, in the weeks and months to come, new allegations about the use of prison labor to create World Cup facilities in Russia. But that being said, one thing that Putin is saying which is true is that the United States Justice Department is using statutes that they—that was granted to it by law after 9/11 as a way to conduct international antiterror arrests in other countries that they have extradition agreements with. So this was a post-9/11 arrest using antiterror statutes as a way to arrest foreign officials and bring them to the United States for trial. And these antiterror statutes are so broad that if someone even tries to send money through a computer server in the United States, it dings off a server in the U.S., then the U.S. Justice Department has jurisdiction to go into another country, conduct an arrest and bring people back to the U.S. for trial. So this is the United States playing globocop. That is irrefutable.
this is Loretta Lynch’s first big move as U.S. attorney general. Now, she took this with her from being U.S. attorney in New York. But before this, of course, the indictments against the banks were announced, or the settlement. Now, that was banks, not individuals. What about that comparison, all these people hauled off, but when it comes to the banks, no one is named?
I think it’s disturbing. And another one is the real timidity to go after local police departments, as well, by the Justice Department. I think this is something that people need to demand and press the Justice Department about. And frankly, I think it is happening because FIFA is such low-hanging fruit. I mean, if you think about it, it’s not people from the United States. It looks extremely aggressive. And FIFA’s reputation has been terrible for about 20, 25 years. And so, this idea of, oh, people are actually doing something about FIFA, especially at a time when soccer is growing in popularity in the United States, this is a very, very popular, bipartisan move for the United States to do. And for the right wing, it also looks very muscular, because it’s going overseas to play globocop and make an arrest and bring people then back to the United States for trial. Yet lost in all of this is the precedent, first of all, that the U.S. is setting by going overseas on a non-terror case to make an arrest and bring people back. And what’s being lost is that you have bankers in this country who facilitated the largest theft in the history of thieves back in 2008, and yet they remain free. I think that’s something people need to continue to press and ask this Justice Department: If they’re this muscular with FIFA, why not with the Wall Street bankers?
Jules Boykoff talking:
corruption in FIFA has been an open secret for a long time. I actually was a little bit surprised when the allegations came out, and I was surprised that the Justice Department would pursue this using the legal means at its disposal. Soccer has changed a lot over the years, and it’s become a big-time money enterprise, and there’s a whole lot at stake. FIFA is supposedly a nonprofit organization, yet it sure is profitable. It has holdings of about $1.5 billion. It made nearly $5 billion off the Brazil World Cup. And so, when you have that kind of money floating around, we shouldn’t be surprised about stories regarding envelopes full of tens of thousands of dollars, or we shouldn’t be surprised by stories like Chuck Blazer, the U.S. soccer honcho, who was renting an apartment at Trump Tower, not too far from you, at $18,000 a month. In fact, the guy had an apartment for his cats at $6,000 a month. So when you have that kind of money floating around, we shouldn’t be surprised that we see these kind of corrupt activities.
What’s interesting to me, too, though, beyond that, beyond the actual illegal corruption, is the corruption that’s sort of imbedded in everyday practice for FIFA. So, for example, since 1999, under Sepp Blatter, he’s distributed funds through various programs, including the Goal Project, Football for Hope, to various small countries, and that’s how he’s gained their allegiance. So your listeners and viewers might be wondering how the heck is this guy going to possibly get re-elected shortly. Therein lies the answer. He’s distributed money, he’s farmed it out, and he’s gained the allegiance from people across the world this way. So he may well get the two-thirds he needs in the first vote today. That’s 140 votes. And if he doesn’t, he may well get the majority required in the second round of voting.
— source democracynow.org
Dave Zirin, sports columnist for The Nation magazine and host of Edge of Sports Radio on SiriusXM. Zirin is the author of several books on sports. His latest is Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy.
Jules Boykoff, teaches political science at Pacific University in Oregon. He is the author of Activism and the Olympics: Dissent at the Games in Vancouver and London and Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games. In the 1980s and 1990s, he represented the U.S. Olympic soccer team in international competition.