update-1UPDATE: Here’s the actual indictment -> CLICK HERE

The case is the most significant yet for United States Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who took office last month. She previously served as the United States attorney in Brooklyn, where she supervised the FIFA investigation. Ms. Lynch and F.B.I. Director James Comey were expected to hold a news conference on Wednesday morning in New York. (more)

(Via Buzzfeed) The U.S. Department of Justice will file corruption charges against several officials in soccer’s worldwide governing organization, multiple reports said late Tuesday.

The charges are part of an indictment against FIFA officials, and according to The New York Times include allegations of fraud, racketeering, and money laundering that has taken place over the last two decades.


The Swiss Federal Office of Justice announced that it had detained six officials Wednesday. The officials have been “detained pending extradition,” and authorities in Switzerland were acting in coordination with U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
The arrested officials are suspected of “having received or paid bribes totaling in the USD millions.” The alleged corruption goes back to the early 1990s, the statement adds.
At least some of the arrests took place at Baur au Lac hotel in Zurick, according to reporters at the scene. FIFA members had gathered in Zurick for an upcoming organization presidential election, Bloomberg reported. Reporter Michael Schmidt described seeing plainclothes officers arriving at the hotel and leaving with bags of evidence. (read much more)


Excerpt from New York Times:

[…] No recent incident better encapsulated FIFA’s unusual power dynamic than the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, which many observers found to be flawed from the start: the decision to award two tournaments at once, critics said, would invite vote-trading and other inducements.
Since only the 24 members of the executive committee would decide on the hosts, persuading even a few of them might be enough to swing the vote. Even before the vote took place, two committee members — Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti — were suspended after an investigation by The Sunday Times caught both men on tape asking for payments in exchange for their support.
It was later revealed by England’s bid chief that four ExCo members had solicited bribes from him for their votes; one asked for $2.5 million, while another, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay, requested a knighthood.

As new accounts of bribery continued to emerge — a whistleblower who worked for the Qatar bid team claimed that several African officials were paid $1.5 million each to support Qatar — FIFA in 2012 started an investigation of the bid process. It was led by a former United States attorney, Michael J. Garcia, who spent nearly two years compiling a report. That report, however, has never been made public; instead, the top judge on the ethics committee, the German Joachim Eckert, released a summary of the report. In it, he declared that while violations of the code of ethics had occurred, they had not affected the integrity of the vote.  (continue reading)

Jack Warner, a former FIFA vice president, is among those expected to face charges in the United States. Credit Luis Acosta/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Jack Warner, a former FIFA vice president, is among those expected to face charges in the United States. Credit Luis Acosta/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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