Three cheers for the FBI.

Forums: Fbi, Fifa, Sports, Entertainment, Crime
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This is really big news over here beating the Queen's speech at the opening of parliament for top billing. Fifa is the most corrupt sports organisation in the world with its president Sepp Blatter behaving like a mafia don. Everyone who loves football gives a big thumbs up to the FBI for launching such a thorough, and long time coming, investigation.

Who would have thought that America would be the saviours of international football even though they do call it soccer?

Quote:

Fifa has been plunged into an unprecedented crisis by the arrest of senior officials in dawn raids in Zurich following a long-running FBI investigation, while Swiss authorities simultaneously launched an inquiry into bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

A dramatic day for football’s world governing body began with 12 plainclothes policemen raiding the five-star Bauer au Lac hotel in Zurich and concluded with a damning press conference in Brooklyn at which the director of the FBI and the US attorney general accused senior Fifa executives of presiding over a “World Cup of fraud”.

Uefa, the European governing body, which has been backing Sepp Blatter’s rival for the Fifa presidency, Prince Ali Bin al-Hussain of Jordan, called for Friday’s presidential election to be postponed and said it might boycott Fifa’s congress. Until Wednesday’s events, Blatter was widely expected to be returned for a fifth term.

Swiss police arrested seven of the 14 officials charged by the US Department of Justice, nine of whom are current or former Fifa executives. All could face up to 20 years in prison. Shortly after, the Swiss federal prosecutor swooped on Fifa’s HQ in a parallel investigation into the controversial bidding race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which were awarded to Russia and Qatar respectively in December 2010.

Those charged include former senior Fifa executives entwined with decades of controversy under Blatter, including Jack Warner from Trinidad and Tobago, the former president of Concacaf, Fifa’s North American regional body, and the Paraguayan Nicolás Leoz, and those who claimed to be part of a new wave of reformers, including Warner’s replacement, Jeffrey Webb. Blatter had anointed Webb, a Fifa vice-president and head of its anti-racism taskforce, as his potential successor.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/may/27/fifa-in-crisis-as-officials-who-presided-over-world-cup-of-are-arrested

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Type: Discussion • Score: 10 • Views: 16,417 • Replies: 179

@izzythepush,

Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue, too. Smile

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

Three cheers for the FBI? As many as that? Democracy only got two.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

Let's hear it for FBI
Give FBI a ha-a-a-a-and

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@Kolyo,

It's about time some police organisation looked into the deeply corrupt way the World's game is administrated, and it's very much to Europe's shame that we didn't do something about it sooner.

So yeah, three cheers, (and democracy can have another one too.)

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The latest. Fifa will never shake itself free of corruption as long as Blatter is in charge.

Uefa should boycott the world cup if he does not go.

Quote:

Fifa president Sepp Blatter has told an emergency meeting of football's governing body he will not quit, amid growing political pressure over a corruption scandal.

Seven top Fifa officials were arrested in Zurich on Wednesday, among 14 people indicted by US prosecutors.

UK PM David Cameron urged Mr Blatter to resign but Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed him for a fifth term.

Fifa's congress opens later. The vote for president will go ahead on Friday.

Michel Platini, the head of Uefa, the European football governing body, had asked Mr Blatter to resign after the crisis talks in Zurich, which involved heads of the six international confederations. The president refused.

Mr Platini later said that if Mr Blatter were re-elected, Uefa might have to discuss its relations with Fifa.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32917364

2 Replies

@izzythepush,

Yes, that's obvious that Blatter has got to go.

Even then, I see it as tricky to get untainted people in place.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

We need an outside body like the IOC to have a good root about in there.

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Quote:

UK PM David Cameron urged Mr Blatter to resign but Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed him for a fifth term.

http://www.pcrail.co.uk/images/norwich/aha.jpg

We can all expect a thread from gunga shortly about the how the FBI is corrupt and could learn a lot from Sepp Blatter about integrity.

2 Replies

The folks over at the Olympic Committee are no doubt watching with interest.

1 Reply

I never read the sports section, but today I sure did.

0 Replies

@hawkeye10,

There's no comparison, really, absolutely none.

1 Reply

@Kolyo,

Putin is firing his shots now, claiming the USA is trying to stymie Russia's 2018 World Cup. It was gained corruptly and Blatter has defended Russia's right to hold it since incursions into Ukraine.

Ironically the FBI action is not looking into the World Cup bids, but the Swiss are. If Blatter manages to cling on Putin gets his World Cup, if not who knows.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

Quote:

claiming the USA is trying to stymie Russia's 2018 World Cup.

if so then Putin is ridiculous....there is not enough time to do it anywhere else. Qatar is another matter.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

There's no comparison, really, absolutely none.

Sochi. Qatar.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

...there is not enough time to do it anywhere else.

it can be easily moved to anyplace that has done it within the past decade that still has most of the infrastructure set up

if it is about the sport

if it is about entertainment $$$ then it's a different question

1 Reply

To those who might be considering using these arrests to claim the glory of the American Justice System:

Quote:

You’re All Out

A defense attorney uncovers a brazen scheme to manipulate evidence, and prosecutors and police finally get caught.

By Dahlia Lithwick

Prosecutorial and police misconduct are often dismissed as just a few bad apples doing a few bad apple-ish things. But what happens when it’s entrenched and systemic and goes unchecked for years? That looks to be the case in Orange County, California, where the situation got so completely out of hand this spring that Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals issued an order disqualifying the entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office (that’s all 250 prosecutors) from continuing to prosecute a major death penalty case.

After literally years of alleged misconduct involving jailhouses informants, as well as prosecutors’ repeated failures to turn over exculpatory material, Judge Goethals determined in March that the office can simply no longer work on the case of mass murderer Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty last year to killing his ex-wife and seven others at a beauty salon in 2011.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/05/orange_county_prosecutor_misconduct_judge_goethals_takes_district_attorney.html

0 Replies

@ehBeth,

Quote:

it can be easily moved to anyplace that has done it within the past decade that still has most of the infrastructure set up

Which were almost certainly also obtained by corruption. It would make no sense unless this is a gambit to Punish Russia specifically, which of course with Obama is highly likely. For all of his highfalutin words he clearly has no interest in pursuing justice.

But no, I dont think even a place that has the stadiums built could get ready, and I am sure that the people of Brazil at least would not stand for any attempt to do the World Cup there 2 years from now.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

That's just one thing, nobody has accused the IOC of racketeering. If you want to start a thread about the IOC go ahead. This is about Fifa.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

But no, I dont think even a place that has the stadiums built could get ready, and I am sure that the people of Brazil at least would not stand for any attempt to do the World Cup there 2 years from now.

Any country with enough stadiums could do it very easily, any western European country could do it.

That's not the issue, not in the meantime at least, it's Blatter. Tomorrow's vote and the consequences of that vote are what will make it interesting.

1 Reply

Three cheers for the FBI.

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