1st UPDATE, Wednesday, 04.30 AM- FIFA reps have confirmed that a planned congress and presidential election scheduled for this Friday will still go ahead, as will the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar respectively. The rep also made clear that controversial FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who has not been implicated in the arrest of six top FIFA officials this morning in a Swiss hotel, will not be stepping down ahead of Friday’s election, which he had widely expected to win. His only challenger, Jordan’s Prince Ali, released a statement labelling the arrests as a “sad day for football.”
PREVIOUSLY, Wednesday, 00.17 AM.– Six top officials of FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, were arrested early this morning by Swiss authorities, acting in cooperation with the US Justice Department, on several serious corruption charges going back to the early 1990s. While the Justice Department has not released the charges, reports hold that they include wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering, and involve suspicion of accepting bribes and kickbacks. The New York Times first reported the news.
The arrests, the climax of an three-year investigation, come just as FIFA is hold
No comments:
Post a Comment