CLOSING IN ON FIFA No. 2
$10M transfer could mean trouble for Sepp
THE MASSIVE federal investigation into corruption in world soccer inched closer to FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Monday when Blatter’s second-in command was identified in news reports as responsible for a $10 million wire transfer that ended up vanishing into the murky coffers of corrupt officials in New York and Trinidad.
Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s secretary general, is the “high-ranking FIFA official” described in the government’s indictment as “causing” the transfer in 2008, according to the New York Times. Valcke denies wrongdoing, and told the Times he did not have the power or authorization to make such a payment.
Valcke, a Frenchman who is Blatter’s most loyal aide, is not named in the blockbuster indictment unveiled last week by prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York. Nor does the indictment’s description of the transfer say that the official who made it knew that the money was a bribe.
One source familiar with the longrunning investigation, however, told the Daily News last Tuesday night, just before the raid in Switzerland, that Valcke would likely become part of the indictment, joining a long list of other officials, including Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer, who together ran CONCACAF, the North American and Caribbean soccer federation that is at the center of the criminal prosecution.
“There are two people who can get Blatter — Warner and Valcke,” said the source, referring to what Valcke might know of any possible involvement by the FIFA boss in the scandal.
Valcke’s name also appears on a confidential list of 44 names of top soccer executives obtained by The News that was given to Blazer after he began cooperating with the feds in 2011. Blazer understood the list named people whose phone calls and emails agents meant to intercept, according to a News source.
FIFA announced early Monday that Valcke would not attend Saturday’s opening of the women’s World Cup tournament in Canada, fueling speculation that he is avoiding a trip that could bring him within reach of U.S. law enforcement officers pursuing fraud and racketeering charges against members of soccer’s international governing body. Even if Valcke were not arrested in Canada, he could be questioned by agents, as could Blatter.
The indictment, unsealed Wednesday in the Eastern District of New York, portrays a $10 million transfer, made in three installments, as a bribe meant to persuade three FIFA executives to support South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 World Cup tournament. The money came in three transfers totaling $10 million to be wired from a FIFA account in Switzerland to a New York bank account controlled by Warner, a former vice president of soccer’s international governing body, according to the indictment.
Warner, who was jailed overnight last week in Trinidad, is accused by the government of diverting the funds to a variety of personal accounts, and of sending $750,000 of it to Blazer, Warner’s former friend and colleague atop the hierarchy of CONCACAF, then based in New York. The two are accused of looting CONCACAF through a web of offshore accounts, kickbacks and phony projects and, in Warner’s case, even a $26 million soccer development facility in Trinidad called the “Havelange Centre for Excellence” built with FIFA funds but deeded in Warner’s name.
Blazer, who turned on Warner in 2011 amid a brazen payment-for-votes scam in the 2011 FIFA election in which a challenger to Blatter doled out $40,000 payments to voters with Warner’s help, is a cooperating witness for the government. He secretly pleaded guilty in 2013 to a range of crimes, including racketeering conspiracy and tax evasion. The Daily News first reported in 2014 the investigation by FBI and IRS agents out of the Eastern District of New York, and that Blazer made surreptitious recordings of his fellow sport executives at the behest of the FBI.
He also had a blunt description of Jerome Valcke, telling one former associate: “He’s Blatter’s bagman.”