To catch a Fifa
How it took the FBI to show dodgy football bosses the red card
Saying Fifa is corrupt is a bit like pointing out that Donald Trump’s coiffure is in danger at the first hint of a breeze. It is not news. We have long suspected football’s governing body to be made up of venal kleptocrats, led by that lodestar of self-aggrandisement, Sepp Blatter.
Yet somehow, despite the best efforts of investigative reporters, for years the body remained unscathed – even when its shameless processes were exposed by the awarding of the World Cup to Russia and Qatar, whose prime qualifications appeared to be the quantity of grease they were prepared to apply to Fifa palms. This was an organisation that reckoned itself untouchable.
Until one morning in the spring of 2015, that is, when half a dozen Fifa officials were arrested in their Swiss hotel beds, on the orders of the FBI. This is where they had fallen down. Never mind the best intentions of the press, once the FBI got wind of the fact these so-called ‘administrators’ were laundering their corruptly obtained booty through the American banks, they were done for. And this is the story Ken Bensinger’s book tells: how America’s law enforcement brought down the most dodgy shower in world sport.
Bensinger’s tale fizzes with the ferocious energy of the thriller writer, with every chapter ending on a cliffhanger. And what a story he has to tell, of bureaucrats paying themselves Hollywood wages, of marketing firms acknowledging that industrial levels of graft were an inevitable part of doing business with Fifa, of money that should have been used to develop the game stolen in plain sight.
Wherever the FBI looked, they found corruption. There was Jack Warner in the Caribbean, diverting aid money dispatched to help the victims of Haiti’s hurricane into his back pocket. There was the serial cynic Jeffrey Webb, claiming to be an anti-corruption new broom even as he swept all available cash into his offshore accounts. And, most ridiculous of all, the American Chuck Blazer, so bloated with illgotten booty he needed a mobility scooter to get around his apartment in – guess where? – Trump Tower. Sadly, as Bensinger reports, not only did Blatter step down without facing criminal charges, none of that loathsome trio is behind bars. Blazer died in 2017; Warner has avoided extradition; while Webb, after being found guilty, has managed to postpone sentencing. Which means the book does not have the climax it – and the game – deserves, the one that echoes to the sound of the cell door slamming shut.