FIFA Indictments

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NYDN Link

I guess Qatar was a bad choice.

FIFA is said to be the most corrupt institution in the world.

It's no big secret of what FIFA has been doing, just no country had bothered to go after them until now.
This is a massive raid a crossed Europe and the U.S., including FIFA HQ in Switzerland.

The U.S. was always suspicious of their loss of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
They claim they have evidence of the $150M+ of bribes paid to FIFA officials for their votes to get Qatar their World Cup.

In a few days Balder will be standing for reelection for the presidency of FIFA unless someone flips on him ratting him out.

Also in 2 days FIFA votes to expel Israel from FIFA.

There is talk about holding another vote the Qatar World Cup, to move it to another location.

Or are the other countries being a sore losers, prompting this raid?

They should.

Washington Post

Yeah, FIFA should have been brought down a decade ago, but the "powers that be" would rather keep the status quo than shake the bridge, even if it's the right thing to do. It had to be an outsider to the football world that cleared up the mess such as the United States, no football loving nation's politicians would risk alienating the fans, which also happen to be a large portion of the electorate in most cases.

All that being said, I'm not too keen on the United States' philosophy that it has the right to arrest foreign nationals on foreign soil-- it's an extension of the Bush era policy towards terrorists that's now being applied well beyond terrorism. The entire "police the world" thing has gotten completely out of control. So while I agree FIFA's leadership is as corrupt as they come, I can't see this as an overall positive because it's setting a pretty far reaching precedent that is eventually going to cause real problems. That being said, since we're on this course when are we hauling in the IOC and Roger Goodell?

As for Qatar, their human rights record is atrocious. The graph of migrant workers deaths doesn't surprise me at all. I'm actually wondering about the games there though-- if the temperature hits 110+ then there will be some sh***y football being played and I wouldn't be surprised to see a few players collapse in a match due to heatstroke.

Actually the U.S. doesn't do the arresting, they just issue an international warrant via Interpol (International Police) and all countries who are part of Interpol and/or have a police treaty with the U.S. must arrest the person in question.

This is the same for all countries who are part of Interpol and/or have police treaty with another country.
The U.S. regularly arrest foreign nationals and its own citizens who have standing warrants overseas and extradites them to said country.

The only time the U.S. failed to carry out it's interpol and treaty obligations was with Amanda Knox, who the U.S. refused to extradite back to Italy to stand retrial.

Though in the case of FIFA, many of the crimes and bribes were committed on U.S. soil through U.S. banks and businesses.
The head office for the Americas is based in Miami, Florida, which means any illegal actions committed by FIFA officials that go through that office, are under the jurisdiction of the U.S.

The IOC isn't all that corrupt by U.S. standards, hell many U.S. states are more corrupt than the IOC.
Though the IOC member nations refused to pay a fee to fund the IOC, so the IOC was forced to turn to corporate sponsorship to fund them.
The IOC voting board that votes on everything, who's members forms the subcommittee that decides where the Olympics go are mostly heads of state, who have diplomatic immunity as a general rule.
You cannot go about issuing and arresting heads of states unless they have done grave crimes against humanity.

One last note, the U.S. is a founding member of FIFA and has been at every World Cup to date!

Yes, I understand all the technicalities, but the fact is we extradited foreign nationals from foreign soil making a major change in a sport loved around the world that as a whole this country doesn't give a flying f**k about. It wreaks of arrogance, the same arrogance that makes people hate us and want to attack us. Imagine if the NFL ran it's banking through Switzerland and they decided to extradite half the team owners-- it's the same thing, just flipped. You think people in this country would be happy about that? We wouldn't tolerate other nations taking our citizens from our sovereign soil, we shouldn't be doing it either.

The first game after the indictments, the USMNT beat the Netherlands in Amsterdam...movie directors cannot think this stuff up.