Blazer, a fat cat who evaded justice
Chuck Blazer, so grossly overweight that he could not even get into his own car, has departed this world, having turned State’s evidence under the relentless probing of the admirable Loretta Lynch, as US attorney general, and the FBI.
Blazer could, and arguably should, have spent the rest of his devious life in prison; instead he was able to stay at liberty while blowing the whistle on his co-conspirators. Note that it was the American authorities who brought him to book. FIFA did nothing to frustrate him. In that old Sicilian saying, one hand washed the other.
Blazer was a member of the FIFA executive committee for 15 years and general-secretary of CONCACAF, whose offices he moved conveniently to New York, where they occupied the whole of the 17th floor of Trump Tower. He himself, all 30 stone of him, had two apartments on the 19th floor, at $18,000 a month, with beside it a $6,000a-month apartment for his cats.
Did he, as has been claimed, help to make soccer popular in America, at a professional level? Perhaps he did, although the soccer moms had already popularised it at schoolboy level. The fact remains that he himself profited grossly from the sport.
He managed to hold out until 2011, when, while still working for FIFA, he gave the authorities access to all his murky records. He then stayed out of the loop for another two years before deciding he had better run for cover, and pleaded guilty to bribery, money laundering and tax evasion, happily putting his fat finger on to many FIFA officials who had long been guilty of such offences.
So he stayed out of jail, which could have amounted to a 75-year prison sentence. Not a bad bargain.