Authorities in Zurich, Switzerland on Wednesday launched an operation to arrest several high-ranking Fifa officials on corruption charges and extradite them to the United States, the New York Times reported.
The Times, citing anonymous law enforcement officials, said the US federal charges include racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud and span two decades of misconduct in football's world governing body. More than 10 officials were expected to be indicted, the newspaper reported.
The paper identified Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands and Eugenio Figueredo of Uruguay, both on Fifa’s executive committee, as among those charged.
Former executive committee member and Concacaf president Jack Warner was also cited.
Among the rest were Costa Rican federation president Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha of Nicaragua, Costas Takkas, Rafael Esquivel, Jose Maria Marin and Nicolas Leoz, the Paraguayan who infamously was reported to have asked England’s former bid chief Lord Triesman for a knighthood in return for his 2018 World Cup vote.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter, the report said specifically, was not charged.
“He is not involved at all,” Fifa spokesman Walter de Gregorio told the Associated Press.
The officials are in Zurich for the Fifa Congress where incumbent Blatter faces a challenge from Jordan’s Prince Ali bin Al Hussein in a presidential election on Friday.
The arrests were made at the lakeside Baur au Lac Hotel in downtown Zurich, long favoured as a place for senior Fifa officials to stay. It was the stage for intense lobbying for votes ahead of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting decisions in December 2010.
An unnamed official told the Times: "We're struck by just how long this went on for and how it touched nearly every part of what Fifa did.
“It just seemed to permeate every element of the federation and was just their way of doing business.
“It seems like this corruption was institutionalised.”
The Swiss Federal Office of Justice confirmed the arrests of six of the individuals.
In a statement, the FOJ said US authorities suspect the officials of having received or paid bribes totalling millions of dollars.
“The bribery suspects – representatives of sports media and sports promotion firms – are alleged to have been involved in schemes to make payments to the soccer functionaries – delegates of Fifa and other functionaries of Fifa sub-organisations – totalling more than US$100 million [Dh367m],” said the statement.
It said the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of New York is investigating these individuals on suspicion of the acceptance of bribes and kickbacks between the early 1990s and now.
Prosecutors expected to announce the case at a news conference at the US attorney's office in Brooklyn, which is leading the investigation, the Wall Street Journal said in a separate report.
US attorney general Loretta Lynch, Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey and Internal Revenue Service criminal chief Richard Weber were expected to appear in Brooklyn to announce the case, the WSJ said.
The reports offer a fresh blow to the credibility of Fifa, which has suffered repeated accusations of wrongdoing over the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which were awarded to Russia and Qatar respectively.
Fifa appointed an independent investigator to look into the allegations and though a summary of his report found some wrongdoing on the part of the Qatari and Russian bid committees, Fifa’s ethics judge concluded it wasn’t enough to question the entire process.
The investigator, former attorney Michael Garcia, subsequently resigned from his role in December after criticising the handling of his report, which was never made public.
While the US actions did not appear to have any connection to the 2018 or 2022 World Cup, Swiss federal prosecutors said later Wednesday they have opened criminal proceedings related to the awarding of both tournaments.
The prosecutors’ office says the proceedings are against “persons unknown on suspicion of criminal mismanagement and of money laundering” in connection with the votes won by Russia and Qatar.
They say they have seized “electronic data and documents” at Fifa’s headquarters as part of the probe.
Swiss federal police say they will question 10 executive committee members who took part in the votes in December 2010.
The Swiss FOJ statement specified the US corruption suspicions were “in connection with soccer tournaments in Latin America” with the “crimes agreed and prepared in the US”.
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