Seven FIFA officials have been placed in handcuffs and two more are the subject of Interpol wanted persons alerts, and while the world waits for the next domino to fall in the largest scandal to rock soccer’s governing body, a question looms.
Will FIFA President Sepp Blatter go down?
“It was clear from (U.S.) Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s famous press conference; it is clear from how this investigation is unfolding that Sepp Blatter has a big target on his back,” CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said. “He is under investigation to be criminally prosecuted. There’s no doubt about that.”
Swiss authorities have said Blatter is not part of their investigation into the bidding processes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, but U.S. officials told CNN this week that the FBI corruption investigation into FIFA’s president continues.
Lynch, for her part, declined to provide any specifics on Blatter during her May 27 news conference, but asked if the probe had cleared Blatter, she did not say no.
“I’m not able to comment further on Mr. Blatter’s status,” she replied.
This was after she had announced a 47-count indictment alleging that 14 defendants had enriched themselves for a generation at the expense of the Beautiful Game.
Blatter was not among those charged and has denied any wrongdoing.
Ties that bind
The defendants included FIFA officials certain to be close to Blatter, including two FIFA vice presidents, a former vice president, executive committee members, heads of soccer’s national associations and current and former presidents of the game’s regional confederations.
The former vice president in the bunch, Jack Warner, who once helmed the Caribbean Football Union and CONCACAF, the confederation governing the Caribbean and North and Central America, could be the linchpin in the U.S. government’s case as he’s indicated a willingness to roll on Blatter.
In a rambling political ad that aired in his native Trinidad and Tobago, where he is a member of Parliament, Warner fired a shot at the United States — not his first — implying that the Americans are being vindictive because they lost the rights to host the 2022 World Cup to a Muslim nation, Qatar, and “as far as they are concerned Muslims are not important.”
In the same breath, curiously, the former soccer bureaucrat said he had prepared documents on FIFA’s transactions, including checks and corroborated statements. The documents are now in “respected hands,” he said, and “there can be no turning back.”
Promising to “no longer keep secrets,” Warner said he “also will give them my knowledge of vital transactions at FIFA including, but not limited to Sepp Blatter. I have been there for 30 consecutive years. I was a heartbeat away from Blatter.”
The ad was titled “Jack Warner: The Gloves Are Off,” indicative of a man who knows he’s in for a fight against an autonomous governing body that tallied $338 million in net profits from 2011 to 2014, has $1.5 billion in reserves and has survived its share of scandals.
He closed his ad, saying, “Blatter knows why he fell, and if there’s one other person who knows, I do.”
In the Justice Department announcement last month, it was revealed that Warner’s sons, Daryll and Daryan, each pleaded guilty in 2013 to charges, including wire fraud and structuring of financial transactions. Their convictions were unsealed last month.
Both have cooperated with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, as has Chuck Blazer, who was general secretary of CONCACAF when Jack Warner was president. Blazer detailed a series of bribes paid to FIFA executives ahead of the 1998 and 2010 World Cups.
A re-election before resigning
Blatter, who has said he will remain in office until at least December, the earliest point at which FIFA can organize a vote to elect his successor, defiantly stood for re-election only last week.
Michel Platini, president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, said he asked Blatter to step down the day before the election, but Blatter told him, “It’s too late.” Blatter then took to a stage at FIFA’s World Congress in Zurich, Switzerland, to blame FIFA corruption on “a few” and call for their punishment as FIFA rebuilds its reputation.
Four days later, though, The New York Times released a bombshell.
Citing U.S. officials and others briefed on the case, the newspaper reported Monday that an anonymous “high-ranking FIFA official” whom prosecutors implicated in an alleged $10 million bribe had been identified as FIFA Secretary General Jérôme Valcke, Blatter’s top lieutenant.
According to the indictment, South Africa was willing to pay $10 million to the Caribbean Football Union “to support the African diaspora” in exchange for Warner’s and two other conspirators’ votes to put the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, instead of Morocco. The South African bid committee has denied any impropriety in the payment.
The official in early 2008 “caused” three payments totaling $10 million to “accounts held in the name of CFU and CONCACAF, but controlled by the defendant Jack Warner,” the indictment alleges. If The Times’ sources are correct, this is as close as the money trail has been to Blatter’s door.
Valcke has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and he has not been accused in any investigation. FIFA told the Times that a now-deceased former finance committee chairman authorized the payment.
Still, the day after Valcke was linked to the payment, and four days after winning re-election when Jordan’s Prince Ali bin al-Hussein bowed out of the contest, Blatter stepped down.
“While I have a mandate from the membership of FIFA, I do not feel that I have a mandate from the entire world of football — the fans, the players, the clubs, the people who live, breathe and love football as much as we all do at FIFA,” he said, vowing to devote his remaining time in office to reform.
Valcke may be the key
Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport business strategy and marketing at Coventry University, said the embattled 79-year-old’s statement appears to be little more than a sleight of hand.
“At first glance the tipping point for Blatter’s resignation would seem to have been the disclosure of a letter sent by the South African Football Association (SAFA) to FIFA secretary general Jérôme Valcke,” Chadwick wrote in a Wednesday column. “FIFA initially claimed Valcke had never been in receipt of such a letter, but the appearance of the document clearly showed otherwise.”
The letter is important because it indicates SAFA President Molefi Oliphant told Valcke to instruct FIFA to make the $10 million payment to Warner and deduct the payment that FIFA had earmarked for South Africa’s World Cup, the professor wrote.
“Sepp Blatter had always claimed that he was unaware of any corrupt activity taking place inside FIFA. The problem is Valcke has been his deputy and a trusted adviser. If Valcke is under suspicion, then Blatter himself is becoming increasingly exposed to scrutiny. And with the FBI circling and world opinion turning against him, Blatter has recently been running out of options, excuses and the loving support of his fellow FIFA family members,” Chadwick wrote
If the feds want to question Blatter, don’t expect him to divulge much, CNN’s Toobin said.
“If Sepp Blatter gets the advice of any good lawyer in the United States, he will certainly be told, ‘Don’t say anything at all,’ ” he said.
But observers can expect more indictments, and U.S. authorities will do their best to convince anyone they arrest to dish dirt on Blatter and his cohorts, Toobin said.
“More people will be charged. I don’t know if Sepp Blatter will be charged, but certainly other people will be charged, and the way criminal investigations work is they flip people. They get people on the lower levels to talk about people higher up, and the target is clearly Sepp Blatter at this point.”
