FIFA exec kicked to N.Y.
JEFFREY WEBB of the Cayman Islands, one of the seven FIFA officials jailed in Switzerland since May, was extradited early Thursday morning to New York, where he is expected to enter a plea in the racketeering conspiracy case that has rocked international soccer.
Webb was a vice president of FIFA before he was arrested May 27 in Zurich and charged in an indictment unsealed in Brooklyn’s federal court.
“He was handed over to a threeman U.S. police escort in Zurich who accompanied him on the flight to New York,” said a statement from Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice, which has worked closely on the case with prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York.
Webb is charged with 17 felony counts, including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. His U.S. attorney, Ed O’Callaghan, has declined to comment on the matter. O’Callaghan did not return requests for comment Thursday.
Last week the Swiss authorities said one official had agreed to be extradited while six others were still fighting extradition — Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel and Jose Maria Marin. They have been accused of accepting millions in bribes related to the sale of marketing rights to soccer tournaments.
All of the men face possibly lengthy prison sentences, a potential motivation for them to cooperate with prosecutors in the hope of lenient treatment. Cooperation could take the shape of sharing information about the top leadership of FIFA, including its president, Sepp Blatter.
Prosecutors have already garnered guilty pleas in the case from top American FIFA executive Chuck Blazer and from Jose Hawilla, a Brazilian sports marketing executive whose company, Traffic, handled lucrative broadcast rights. Both men cooperated extensively with agents from the FBI and IRS, helping the feds build a massive case.
In November, the Daily News revealed Blazer’s undercover cooperation with the feds, which began in 2011 and included secretly taping his colleagues in London and other cities. His information helped prosecutors build a case against Webb and 13 other men, all FIFA members or sports marketing officials.
Webb, a banker and longtime president of the Cayman Islands Football Association, was until his arrest the president of CONCACAF, the regional confederation under FIFA’s umbrella overseeing 41 national soccer associations in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. The position made him a possible successor to Blatter.
Webb took the helm of CONCACAF in 2012 after a bribery scandal prompted the ouster of the two men who had led the organization for decades, Blazer and Jack Warner of Trinidad (the latter has also been indicted, but remains in Trinidad, where he has declared his innocence).
In replacing Warner, Webb portrayed himself as a reformer, but according to the government’s indictment, he solicited and accepted bribes from Traffic executives “almost immediately after taking office.” The “criminal schemes” involved media rights to soccer tournaments in 2012 and 2013.
The indictment describes Webb as seeking a $3 million bribe, then receiving it through a complicated series of transactions through intermediary accounts. At one point, suspect funds were allegedly deposited in the account of a swimming pool builder in Blairsville, Ga., who was building a pool for Webb at a home Webb bought in 2013 in Logansville, Ga.
Another sum, according to the indictment, was deposited in an account connected to Webb’s purchase of real estate in Stone Mountain, Ga.
A status conference in the case scheduled for Friday relates to the only Traffic executive Aaron Davidson of Miami, who is in plea negotiations with prosecutors.