Legal kickoff is coming
Feds: Court date soon for FIFA’s Webb
JEFFREY WEBB of the Cayman Islands, one of 14 defendants indicted this spring in the Justice Department’s sweeping FIFA corruption case, is in an undisclosed location in the United States and will make his first court appearance in the near future, a federal prosecutor said Friday.
Webb, the former president of CONCACAF who also served as a FIFA vice president, was arrested May 27 in Zurich, a week after a federal grand jury in Brooklyn handed down an indictment that charged him with 17 felonies, including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.
At a status conference hearing for co-defendant Aaron Davidson at the Brooklyn federal courthouse Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Evan Norris told U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie that Webb is in the United States but that his initial court appearance has not yet been set.
“Your honor, we don’t have a date yet,” Norris said. Norris did say that since Webb had agreed to be extradited, “he could be here shortly.”
Norris’ statement marks the first time Justice Department officials have acknowledged that Webb has been extradited from Switzerland to the U.S. Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice issued a statement last week that said one of the seven FIFA defendants arrested at a Swiss lakeside hotel in May had agreed to waive extradition. Prosecutors confirmed that a defendant had also agreed to be extradited in a letter to Dearie on Thursday, although they did not identify Webb by name.
The Daily News and other media outlets have reported that Webb was the FIFA official who had waived extradition, and Dearie confirmed that Friday when he asked Norris if the Cayman Islands product would appear in court soon.
Norris said it could take months to bring other defendants to the United States to face charges if they fight extradition from Switzerland or other countries, and Dearie expressed concerns that the extradition process could hamper Davidson’s right to a speedy trial, raising the possibility that defendants who decline to take a plea deal could be tried separately.
But according to the letter to Dearie, Davidson may not go to trial: His lawyers are in negotiations for a plea deal, the prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York told the judge.
Davidson, the president of Traffic Sports USA and the only one of the 14 individuals indicted who has been arraigned, pleaded not guilty in late May to charges that include wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice. Traffic Sports USA, Inc. and Traffic Sports International, the Brazil-based parent company of Davidson’s firm, pleaded guilty to wire fraud on May 14.
Prosecutors confirmed that discovery had begun in Davidson’s case. Their letter to Dearie said the evidence they have gathered includes “audio recordings in multiple languages; bank, wire transfer and other financial records; contracts in multiple languages; emails, text messages, and other correspondence in multiple languages; meeting minutes; travel records; handwritten notes; records produced to the United States by foreign countries pursuant to mutual legal assistance requests; and records seized pursuant to search warrants.”
The 44-year-old Florida resident’s next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 18.
Davidson’s lawyers, Lee Vartan and Jenny Kramer, declined comment outside the courthouse after the hearing.
The blockbuster case is based in the Eastern District of New York, where prosecutors worked with agents from the FBI and IRS who have been building a massive case that cuts across nations and decades and alleges wrongdoing in FIFA votes involving the location of the 2010 World Cup tournament and the 2011 reelection of FIFA president Sepp Blatter. The Daily News first reported the Eastern District involvement in November.
The investigation is ongoing and could yield more indictments. A key prosecution witness was American former FIFA executive Chuck Blazer, who became a cooperating witness in 2011. Blazer was the former general secretary of CONCACAF, the North American-Caribbean soccer federation formerly led by Jack Warner, who was also indicted and charged with bribery, money laundering, corruption and wire fraud conspiracy.
According to lawyers representing the Trinidadian government, the U.S. still hasn’t made an official request to the Office of the Attorney General for the extradition of Warner. If the request is not made by July 26, according to treaty agreements between Trinidad and the U.S., Warner can make an application to the court and may be discharged from custody. A magistrate, however, could extend the deadline to give Trinidad’s attorney general time to review evidence on whether Warner should be extradited. The Trinidadian government has requested an extension, which is opposed by Warner’s legal team.
Six of the defendants remain jailed in Switzerland and five have been arrested in far-flung corners of the soccer world, including Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Italy and Argentina. The remaining defendant, Jose Margulies of Brazil, is still at large.