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FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

nytimes.com

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Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#161

Post by mendelson »

kijin wrote: post #68
thrillgore wrote: post #57

My understanding is that FIFA can ban countries from the organization for whatever reasons it sees fit. This probably cost the US any future world cups for the foreseeable future.

Why do you think the US cares? For FIFA, the US is the single largest source of television audience and therefore advertising revenue. For the US, on the other hand, soccer is just one of many sports. In fact, the US is one of very few countries where soccer is not the sport. Americans are nowhere near as desperate for soccer as FIFA is desperate for American money.

> Why do you think the US cares?

It's a fair assumption that the administration in the US cares. They put significant work into the 2022 World Cup bid and were beaten in the final round by Qatar. It is highly unlikely that this is unrelated to that.

Fine by me, honestly. FIFA is pretty damn corrupt, and if this is what it takes, then so be it.

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#162

Post by mikeryan »

slg wrote: post #157
iwwr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, hosting a World Cup has become a net negative to a country. The costs (significant and increasing) go to the government and the profits go to FIFA and the sponsors.

This is highly dependent on the host nation. The biggest factor is that they have already invested a large amount in infrastructure and/or will continue to make use of the facilities after the event. The 94 Cup in the US and the 2006 Cup in Germany are the two most recent examples. It is very hard for developing nations like South Africa, Brazil, or Qatar to have any chance of turning a net profit.

Brazil at least also has the Olympics coming up so one would hope some of the infrastructure put in place for the World Cup will transfer over.

Who knows though.

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#163

Post by ryanlol »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #29

Not in time to prevent the nonsense of the Qatar world cup (nor to save the lives of the migrant workers being sacrificed to consummate that nonsense)

What are you talking about? The mortality rates of migrants in Qatar are exceptionally low.

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#164

Post by dragonwriter »

venomsnake wrote: post #152

Can anyone explain the jurisdiction?

The charges allege a conspiracy involving (among others) US persons (individuals and corporations), making extensive use of US financial institutions, and obstruction of justice relating to US law enforcement investigation related to that conspiracy.

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#165

Post by lordnacho »

Bud wrote: post #129
Ntrails wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint - the infrastructure stays around. The stadiums get used and re-used, transport improvements benefit locals in perpetuity, tourism/trade brings in money to the economy, not to mention there are general "morale" reasons to host. These are not profit making events to host, or at least they ought not to be. The benefits are varied and certainly not trivially reducible to profit/loss on the event itself.

On the contrary, recent experience with Olympics and World Cups alike shows that the stadiums often lie fallow, a complete waste of resources. Promised "transport improvements" are often never built in the first place, or built at a level far below what was promised to local residents. Tourism money fails to recoup what was invested.

Exactly. The World Cup being what it is could be played in a public park, and people would still skip their kid's birth to watch it.

And yet FIFA insists on a bunch of expensive stadiums each time.

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#166

Post by dragonwriter »

notsony wrote: post #131
zimpenfish wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if people have money to throw away like that, they could just as well throw it to my bank account. As someone pointed out on Twitter, "oh look, the only people left to vote on Friday are Blatter-friendly".

FIFA is not a public institution, it's a private association. How a private club wants to structure payments is entirely up to them. So how will any bribery charges stick, unless public officials have been paid off? Can't believe Blatter and his cronies would be so stupid, but perhaps some of the weaker and greedier executives were, so Blatter is happy to serve them up?

> FIFA is not a public institution, it's a private association. How a private club wants to structure payments is entirely up to them.

The bribery charges aren't about payments to FIFA, they are about payments (for instance) that constitute fraud against FIFA (and various other subordinate soccer organizations, among others) as an organization. [0] In some cases, these are frauds that were being investigated when the relevant officials resigned from FIFA (ending the FIFA investigations, but not retroactively negating the fraud.)

While organizations current executives may have power over the organization, they aren't legally indistinguishable from the organization.

> Can't believe Blatter and his cronies would be so stupid

Its not uncommon for powerful people with a tendency to corruption to be, or become after years of smaller transgressions not seeming to have consequences, arrogant enough to commit major transgressions that authorities are willing and able to prosecute.

[0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2088...

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#167

Post by lordnacho »

One thing I don't get is why this form of corruption is illegal. FIFA is a sort of international club, right? If I make an international group for the placement of Tiddlywinks world cups, and I make some internal rules for it, why does the state care how the politics turns out? Is it illegal to bribe someone making some private decision?

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#168

Post by bane »

Okay, I'll ask it: why does it take the U.S. to get involved in fighting corruption against an almost entirely non-U.S. organization that governs a sport that's not very popular here? Why isn't this happening in Europe or Central/South America where the impact is more immediate?

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#169

Post by jtbigwoo »

mullingitover wrote: post #117
protomyth wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. I get prosecuting the US citizens who paid bribes (long history there), but I don't get how the US can go after foreign nationals not on US soil for something that was done outside the US and not an attack on the US. I really don't understand why a country would extradite them in the first place. We can get FIFA, but we cannot get Roman Polanski?

> ...but I don't get how the US can go after foreign nationals not on US soil for something that was done outside the US and not an attack on the US. Some combination of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (where a company can be prosecuted in the US for bribing officials abroad) mixed with RICO. The RICO part might not even be necessary, but it would allow them to go after anyone in the organization if they felt like…

I had to go through FCPA training for my employer a while ago, so take all this with a grain of salt:

As I understand it, the FCPA covers U.S. companies and their foreign affiliates and companies/organizations that trade securities in the U.S. If any employee or agent of such an organization bribes a foreign official, the DOJ or the SEC can go after them. "Foreign official" is defined really broadly as well. It includes foreign government employees, but also employees of international agencies and employees of government-managed industries (like doctors working for a state university hospital.) Also, the payment has to be illegal and not just "grease" money to speed up an ordinary task.

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but the DOJ might be able to draw a line from various U.S. individuals to various FIFA board members or from US Soccer to FIFA itself depending on how broad the definitions are. If they get that second one, everybody on FIFA's board is screwed.

Re: FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S

#170

Post by [deleted] »

oliyoung wrote: post #11
iaw wrote: post #2

Wow. I'm impressed and somewhat surprised that the U.S. would be the entity to enforce this given the relative lack of presence FIFA has in the U.S. Maybe it's because the U.S. lost the world cup (as in hosting privileges)?

This is why (from the NYT) "Indictment cites bribes, kickbacks related to * WC qualifications in Concacaf; * Gold Cup and Concacaf Champions League * Copa América * Copa Libertadores." The USA or American owned teams participated in all of those competitions.

[deleted]
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