Pedantry corner:
It ain’t most of the top executive of international football’s governing body.
From Wikipedia:
“The Executive Committee consists of a President, elected by the Congress in the year following a FIFA World Cup, eight vice-presidents and 15 members, appointed by the confederations and associations”
That’s 24.
The BBC is reporting six football officials have been arrested. It’s not clear if all of them are on the Executive committee.
So, at best, it’s a quarter.
What I would be curious to know (aside from ‘because we don’t do that to people who matter, that’s why’) is whether (and if not, why not) the notorious corruption of FIFA exposes companies that sponsor them to liability. Thanks to the FCPA, there are various things that it is not legal for a US company to do in the process of…greasing the wheels of commerce…in some legally flexible jurisdiction. Given that FIFA both interacts heavily with various minor athletics/recreation-related government figures and whichever host they are parasitizing for the world cup; it seems like Team Legal might advise you to keep your sponsorship money at arms length from the fascinating details of the implementation.
(Also, are there any international athletics bodies that aren’t even more rotten than month old cocktail shrimp?)
See? Here’s the good old U.S of A in the forefront of exposing corruption and prosecuting it wherever it rears its ugly head, except certain exempt zones such as lower Manhattan. Brings a tear pf pride to my eye. Besides, nobody here watches soccer, so it’s okay.
The U.S. might be the only country that’s uninterested enough in soccer to do this without repercussions. They haven’t spread the money around Washingyon as much as they have in other capitals.
What we need to do is arrange a mutually beneficial justice swap with some of the soccer-crazed bleeding-heart countries!
Our crack prosecution squads can comb through FIFA’s dirty laundry(which, thanks to our own…ethically flexible…financial system will quite likely have passed through US jurisdiction at various times) and come down like an adversarial ton of bricks without fear of blowback from the less than terrifying US soccer fans.
In exchange, maybe they can provide somebody who isn’t an avowed hatchetman for US policy to help us keep our war criminals and John Yoo in line.
Gains from trade? Comparative advantage? It’s a win-win!
When will we get to the IOC? Because suspending local democratic rights in order to protect the profits of an international bullshit TV rights cartel is up there with FIFA behaviour.
Well, it’s close, anyway.
It sounds like FIFA need some freedom delivered to them from the United States. But then again, it’s soccer. Who cares about that?
I mis-read that as “keep our war criminals and John Woo in line.”
Which makes a lot of sense, really.
Mission Accomplished: II was, in many ways, the best film in the Mission: Accomplished franchise.
And Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, told reporters, “I hope we will not have talk about this again.”
Because we paid an absolute shitload of money to make this thing happen, and Sochi already grabbed its pound of flesh…
Why exactly does the US think it has jurisdiction - someone used US made toilet paper in the Swiss FIFA HQ? Such an investigation is more than overdue but is this the usual USian megalomaniacal attitude to jurisdiction (US law =world law) showing again?
No, some of the corruption happened on U.S. soil, so the U.S. does in fact have some jurisdiction here.
GAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! [If they’re convicted rather than taking a plea deal, and don’t have the money or power to get out of a prison sentence by paying a fine or doing probation.]
The meeting in Switzerland was apparently a convenient opportunity to get them all at the same time, in a location moderately friendly to US extradition requests(though, given the Swiss penchant for treating a bit of financial malfeasance as a purely private matter, the US must have had something good, or the Swiss must have been atypically upset); but if you look at the list of bagged FIFA officials, it’s almost entirely people from Concacaf, which is the football association with the closest US ties.
Either the US didn’t have anything, or couldn’t make a case, for the agents connected to football bodies in other regions.
Apologies to all citizens of earth. That piercing sound that just hurt your eardrums was my shrieking laughter.
And I really really really hope this adds fuel to the fire over the Qatar decision and a possible revote. I don’t really think that Slave Cup 2022 will be moved, but we can hope.
The Swiss have opened their own criminal proceedings:
The US isn’t quite as uninterested in Soccer as you might think, and there’s some speculation that this investigation was payback for the decision to award 2022 to Qatar.
Not unreasonable payback, mind you.
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