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CBC Sports
May 28, 2015
by Andre Mayer
Bribery, match-fixing, fraud — for years now, FIFA has played defence against allegations of corruption.
But on Wednesday, soccer’s governing body was dealt arguably its most damaging blow, when Swiss authorities arrested seven high-ranking executives as part of a larger criminal investigation.
People who have followed the legal action against FIFA in recent years say that the very nature of the organization has allowed it to operate with impunity for so long.
And there’s no simple game plan to change that.
“The problem is [FIFA’s] lack of accountability and that everything is out of the public eye,” says Roger Pielke, a professor at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
On Wednesday, Swiss police, by request from the U.S. Department of Justice, arrested seven FIFA officials at a Zurich hotel.
The executives, who include FIFA vice-presidents Jeffrey Webb and Eugenio Figueredo, are among 14 indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy.
The U.S. investigation alleges that the corruption played out over 24 years. The head of the IRS criminal investigation division called it “the World Cup of fraud.”
Hours later, Swiss federal prosecutors opened criminal proceedings related to the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively. Allegations of bribery have swirled around both bids for years.
A ‘fake democracy’
One of the reasons there has been so little oversight of FIFA’s activities is that the group falls into an unusual category, says Pielke.
FIFA is technically a non-profit, although one that brought in an estimated $2 billion US in revenue in 2014.
Organizations like FIFA and the International Olympic Committee “are not companies, they’re not truly international organizations, like the World Health Organization, and they’re not governmental,” says Pielke.
Pielke calls FIFA “a Swiss-based members’ club” that sits in a “netherworld of international governance.” As a result, “there aren’t good mechanisms in place to hold them accountable to anything.” Read more …
