BROOKLYN, NY—A 47-count indictment was unsealed early this morning in federal court in Brooklyn charging 14 defendants with racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracies, among other offenses, in connection with the defendants’ participation in a 24-year scheme to enrich themselves through the corruption of international soccer. The guilty pleas of four individual defendants and two corporate defendants were also unsealed today.
The defendants charged in the indictment include high-ranking officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the organization responsible for the regulation and promotion of soccer worldwide, as well as leading officials of other soccer governing bodies that operate under the FIFA umbrella. The defendants Jeffrey Webb and Jack Warner—the current and former presidents CONCACAF, the continental confederation under FIFA headquartered in the United States—are among the soccer officials charged with racketeering and bribery offenses. The defendants also include U.S. and South American sports marketing executives who are alleged to have systematically paid and agreed to pay well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks to obtain lucrative media and marketing rights to international soccer tournaments.
The charges were announced by Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch; Kelly T. Currie, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Diego W. Rodriguez, Assistant Director-in-Charge, FBI, New York Field Office; Richard Weber, Chief, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation; and Special Agent in Charge Erick Martinez, IRS Criminal Investigation, Los Angeles Field Office.
Also earlier this morning, Swiss authorities in Zurich arrested seven of the defendants charged in the indictment, the defendants Jeffrey Webb, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel, and José Maria Marin, at the request of the United States.1
The guilty pleas of the four individual and two corporate defendants that were also unsealed today include the guilty pleas of Charles Blazer, the long-serving former general secretary of CONCACAF and former U.S. representative on the FIFA executive committee; José Hawilla, the owner and founder of the Traffic Group, a multinational sports marketing conglomerate headquartered in Brazil; and two of Hawilla’s companies, Traffic Sports International, I
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