Chuck Blazer, who touched off soccer scandal, dead at 72

NEW YORK — Chuck Blazer, the disgraced American soccer executive whose admissions of corruption set off a global scandal that ultimately toppled FIFA president Sepp Blatter, has died. He was 72.

Blazer’s death was announced Wednesday by his lawyers, Eric Corngold and Mary Mulligan. At a November 2013 court hearing during which Blazer entered guilty pleas to federal charges, Blazer said he had rectal cancer, diabetes and coronary artery disease.

With huge girth, charm, wit and a pet parrot, Blazer cut a large figure as he made deals from an office and apartment in Trump Tower. The No. 2 official in the governing body of soccer’s North and Central American and Caribbean region from 1990 to 2011 and a member of FIFA’s ruling executive council from 1997 to 2013, Blazer was central to the rise of the sport in the United States.

Blazer accused CONCACAF President Jack Warner and fellow executive committee member Mohamed bin Hammam of offering $40,000 bribes to voters in the 2011 FIFA presidential election. Bin Hammam had been the lone challenger to Blatter, who was elected unopposed to a fourth term after Warner and bin Hammam were suspended. Blatter was elected to a fifth term in 2015 before resigning.

But it turned out Blazer’s conduct was as corrupt as the actions of the people he accused.

A CONCACAF investigation report released in 2013 said Blazer “misappropriated CONCACAF funds to finance his personal lifestyle,” causing the organization to “subsidize rent on his residence in the Trump Tower in New York; purchase apartments at the Mondrian, a luxury hotel and residence in Miami; sign purchase agreements and pay down payments on apartments at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas.”

U.S. government agents stopped him on a Manhattan street, threatened him with arrest, and he became a government informant.