Fifa scandal exposes extent of regional corruption
It is hard to think of a US action more popular in Latin America than the Department of Justice’s arraignment of top-ranking officials from the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa), the governing body of world football, last week. Of the 14 men named as defendants in the US-led investigation all bar two are citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean. Nowhere is the grim satisfaction among the region’s legion of football fans greater than in the two powerhouses of world football: Brazil and Argentina. Domestic probes into corruption in the game in both countries have failed to result in any of the game’s top-ranking administrators facing charges for the widespread corruption afflicting the sport here. That may now be about to change, with public tolerance of corruption in the region at an all-time low.
and money laundering, among other offences. The US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, described the corruption as “rampant, systemic, and deep- rooted”. The indictment went on: “Two generations of soccer officials abused their positions of trust for personal gain, frequently through an alliance with unscrupulous sports marketing executives who shut out competitors and kept highly lucrative contracts for themselves through the systematic payment of bribes and kickbacks [mostly] in connection with the commercialization of the media and marketing rights associated with various soccer matches and tournaments.”