Sports

​Excerpts From the FIFA Files

For more headlines and stories like this, check out the VICE Sports World News Roundup, published daily.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice dropped several hundred pages of legalese regarding the various charges of corruption and indictments of 27 FIFA officials. At first glance, these documents are dauntingly long and impenetrably boring. Within this sea of lawyer-speak, however, are a few revealing “for examples.” These examples are an enlightening account of how the FIFA officials and intermediaries did what they did.

Videos by VICE

We compiled some of the more interesting examples of FIFA misdeeds below. Enjoy!

A number of the bribery schemes outlined by the DoJ have to do with marketing rights. In short, there were several third party organizations that bought the marketing rights to various tournaments—for example, the Gold Cup or Copa Libertadores—and then sold advertising space to different companies—car companies, beer companies—often at a large profit. FIFA officials wanted some of that profit, and they asked for bribes. Sometimes, the organizations used intermediaries to make these payments, but they were often amazingly brash.

Jose Margulies was one such intermediary. Margulies appears to be one of the more cautious members during this whole scheme. Here’s how he bribed a number of FIFA officials:

Although not the only media rights holder involved, Traffic Sports, a Brazilian sports management company with an American subsidiary in Miami, appears to be at the center of much of the corruption. At one point, Traffic executive Jose Hawilla was making million dollar payments to Rafael Esquivel, the former president of the Venezuelan Football Association and a CONMEBOL Executive Committee member. Here’s how they did it:

As you might imagine, former FIFA VP and CONCACAF President Jack Warner and former ExCo member and CONCACAF General Secretary Charles Blazer make a couple appearances in the document. Those two did alright for themselves. They also used their own personal accounts:

Another former FIFA VP and CONCACAF President, Jeff Webb, also makes a couple appearances. He did his best work in association with his pool man. A portion of a $1.5 million Traffic Sports bribe was paid to Webb as follows:

Anyway, I think you all get the idea. None of these guys were particularly careful. Some of the activity even took place after the first round of arrests in May. The DoJ is just connecting the dots, following the paper trails, and leaning on/flipping people as necessary. The schemes themselves were remarkably simple.

Thank for your puchase!
You have successfully purchased.