FIFA: Footballs Most Notorious and Untouchable Criminals

With the release of the new Netflix documentary "FIFA Uncovered" it has reminded us of the corruption behind the upcoming and previous world cups. It is therefore topical with the Qatar World Cup fast approaching, with its own issues such as human rights abuses and corruption/bribery to seal the official hosting of this years world cup. Therefore, this blog will delve into FIFA and the abuse made by them on footballs legacy and future.

Sports have always been a significant component of society. It has received a lot of consideration and funding for development. Sports have received great respect and consideration, but so have those who participate in them, especially sportsmen. Sports have a long history that dates back more than 3,000 years. However, in the past, playing sports was more like practising for battle. After the Greeks held the first Olympic games in 776 BC, the concept of sports gained popularity, and it has continued to develop ever since.

In recent years, as sports have been more commercialised, they have transformed into a worldwide event that involves a variety of stakeholders in addition to the athletes themselves, including sponsors, broadcasters, and viewers from around the globe. Sports have become an economy unto itself because of this commercialisation, with many States and the global order thriving over it. The fascinating phenomena of sports and the commerce connected to it have benefited athletes and the people who support them by creating diverse infrastructures and logistics. However, it has also drawn some criminally inclined people who take advantage of the opportunities that sports provide. Due to the enormous sums of money involved in modern sports, the possibility of economic crimes like fraud and corruption has been steadily rising. A sport can be utilised by criminals to commit unlawful acts for money, just like any other company can, or to launder the proceeds of crime.

Sports that could be prone to unlawful activity include popular global sports like football, regional favourites like cricket, basketball, or ice hockey, as well as boxing, kickboxing, and wrestling that have a history of having connections to the criminal underworld. One of the most popular sports that has developed into an industry with economic effects on numerous social structures at various levels is football. It is important to note that football continues to support a number of processes that have made progress at the economic, social, educational, and cultural levels feasible. Since the beginning of the 1990s, as television rights and corporate sponsorships increased, the game of football has been impacted by capitalism's rapid growths. In parallel, the professional football player market has seen unprecedented globalisation, with an increase in players being hired by teams outside of their home nation and transfer fees of incredible size. The highest known transfer fee was paid by Neymar when he moved from F.C. Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain in August 2017 for £198 million pounds. Transfers take place all around the world. Football organisations at the national and supranational levels may not have much control over the cross-border money flows involved, which presents ideal chances for money laundering and moving.

Football has experienced such a large infusion of money that it is now more susceptible to many corrupt and immoral activities including bribery, tax evasion, money laundering, nepotism, etc. Some of the causes that can be linked to the persons' aforementioned unethical actions include; the low or non-existent entrance barriers in the business, the many stakeholders in the football industry have been particularly easy for corrupt persons to infiltrate.

Due to the complexity of the involved stakeholders' networks, one of the main challenges has also been their unwillingness to admit guilt or blame. More and more people, including managers, middlemen, sponsors, and organisations that own players, are now involved in the industry as a result of the rise in international transfers and the increasing amounts of sponsorship and broadcast money spent on player sales and purchases. A person may encourage unethical activities to get an advantage in the cutthroat world of football because of the enormous amount of money involved in the market for football.

In the football market, a sizable amount of the money invested assumes future profits, which creates a level of unpredictability and uncertainty. As a result, the money invested has an illogical nature. Due to the fact that many clubs and sporting organisations are already in poor condition, financial management of these organisations is equally crucial. Such circumstances lead the management to engage in unscrupulous acts in addition to forcing them to take money without properly verifying the sources.

The Structure of FIFA

Under the Swiss Civil Code, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is a non-profit organisation. In addition to regulating the sport, FIFA's goals and responsibilities include growing and promoting football around the globe. The 209 national associations that make up FIFA are divided into four continental confederations, which are:

• Union of European Football Associations (UEFA),

• Confederation of South American Football (CONMEBOL),

• Confédération African Football (CAF),

• Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF),

• Asian Football Confederation (AFC),

• and Oceania Football Association are among the international football federations (OFC).

Each national organisation is in charge of overseeing amateur to professional clubs and leagues across the nation's football landscape. The FIFA Congress, the world of football's legislative body, is composed of one representative from each national association and is in charge of, among other things, electing the president of FIFA, amending the FIFA Statutes, approving financial transactions, and dismissing Executive Committee members from their positions. One vote is given to each member association, as in the FIFA presidential election. FIFA is primarily governed by the Executive Committee, which is made up of representatives chosen by different football confederations and associations from across the world.

When a subject is unrelated to the Congress' authority or is not expressly forbidden to the other FIFA bodies, the Executive Committee's function and obligation come into focus. FIFA also has a number of other committees in charge of overseeing various aspects of international football administration, including marketing and television, money matters, legal matters, and football clubs.

As an organisation, FIFA is also charged with some judicial duties, including the ability to resolve disputes internally, outside of legal channels. The FIFA rules stipulate that in order for the aforementioned responsibilities to be carried out properly, the parties must submit to the jurisdiction of the arbitral body and forgo any right to legal appeal, making the arbitral body's judgement binding. The following are the three principal organisations linked to the FIFA's quasi-judicial responsibilities:

The Disciplinary Committee

The major goal of the disciplinary committee is to uphold discipline both on and off the field of play during football games. The adjudication of disciplinary measures relating to "inadmissible conduct both on and off the field of play," "sanctioning significant infringements which have escaped the match officials' attention," or "rectifying clear errors in the referee's disciplinary rulings" is thus related with them.

The Ethics Committee

The FIFA Ethics Committee is a judicial body that hears cases involving unethical and immoral behaviour including bribery and corruption. It has two wings: an investigative wing and a judicial wing. One of the main duties of the Ethics Committee is to investigate any allegations of wrongdoing or bribery made against FIFA's other body, the Executive Committee. The Ethics Committee must also be totally impartial and free from any outside influence. Any party subject to the FIFA Code of Ethics, which includes all FIFA officials and players, may report an ethical violation to the Ethics Committee's investigatory chamber. The investigatory chamber will then start procedures and may make a recommendation to the adjudicatory chamber for review.

The Appeal Committee

The main responsibility of the Appeal Committee is to definitively decide on cases that have been decided by the Disciplinary Committee and Ethics Committee but are not expressly excluded from appeal.

The prompt resolution of complaints without the involvement of external adjudicating authorities is the main goal that FIFA hopes to accomplish through the aforementioned internal committees. The FIFA Disciplinary Code and the FIFA Code of Ethics control and regulate these bodies, and the members of these adjudicating bodies are chosen by the FIFA Executive Committee. Each committee's chairperson must possess "legal qualifications," albeit these qualifications are not stated.

Corporate Crime and FIFA

The allegations against numerous high-ranking FIFA executives are one of the many problems that have dogged the organisation. The US Department of Justice is currently looking into these allegations. The United States Department of Justice currently has two indictments: one from May 2015 that is more limited in scope and one from December 2015 that is more comprehensive.

A 161-page indictment was unveiled by the US Department of Justice on May 27, 2015, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The fourteen current and former FIFA executives, as well as the five private businesspeople that transacted business with FIFA, were named in the aforementioned indictment. The aforementioned indictment was delivered by the Brooklyn Grand Jury. The Swiss and US officials conducted many raids and search operations at FIFA's different locations in Miami and Zurich as part of the investigation described in the aforementioned indictment. In Florida Seven FIFA officials were detained by Swiss authorities after an early morning raid at Zurich's opulent Baur au Lac Hotel. The offences allegedly committed include the payment of $150,000,000 in bribes over a 20-year period, frequently in conjunction with the choice of a host country for the FIFA World Cup or the sale of marketing and broadcast rights for FIFA events. According to the allegations, the schemes involve officials asking for and accepting bribes and kickbacks from sports marketing executives in connection with the commercialisation of the media and marketing rights particularly with major events. This relates to a number of football games and competitions, as well as schemes involving the giving and receiving of bribes and kickbacks in connection with the sponsorship of the Brazilian Football Confederation (Confederaço Brasileira de Desportos) by an US sportswear company, the choice of the host nation for the 2010 World Cup, and the 2011 FIFA presidential election.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch released a 236-page superseding indictment on 3-12-2015. The supplemental indictment accuses sixteen additional people connected to football in the western hemisphere of paying more than $200,000,000 in bribes. The superseding indictment listed a total of 27 indictees, including a number of additional authorities. There were therefore forty-one defendants in total—individuals and corporations. High-ranking FIFA executives were accused of serious crimes like money laundering, fraud, and bribery from 1991 to the present in the aforementioned indictment by US investigators. In total, the soccer officials were accused of colluding to seek out and accept kickbacks and bribes totaling more than $200 million for publicly endorsing the sports marketing professionals who had consented to the illegal payments.

Jurisdiction and International Law

In the aforementioned indictments, the defendants who were charged and tried under US law, as well as the entire transaction that was under investigation, were of a global nature, raising the issue of extraterritorial execution of laws. The territoriality concept, a recognised and frequently relied-upon form of prescriptive or legislative jurisdiction under public international law, was really being enforced by the US lawyers in the indictment. The accusations levelled against the accused show that the aforementioned indictments were of an international scope. However, a thorough examination of the case's facts and circumstances revealed that the majority of the transactions and the people involved were connected to US.

The facts and situations listed below can help you understand the jurisdictional issues:

• Eugenio Figueroa, a dual US-Uruguayan national, and Aaron Davidson, a US citizen, are two of the fourteen indictees. Argentina, Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Trinidad & Tobago, the United Kingdom, and Venezuelan citizens are among the other defendants.

• The organisations FIFA, CONCACAF, and CONMEBOL are all headquartered abroad. FIFA is a legal person under Swiss law with its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, although it has had a development office there since 2011 and hosted meetings of its Executive Committees there. Although its main administrative office was formerly in New York and is now in Miami, Florida, CONCACAF was founded as a non-profit organisation in the Bahamas in 1994. While CONMEBOL has its home and headquarters in Paraguay.

• Third, although Traffic Sports USA, the Florida-based business it bought in the early 2000s, was renamed Traffic Group, the worldwide sports marketing corporation accused of paying these soccer officials, it has its headquarters in Brazil.

The significant link between the alleged bribery and the banks of the United States and their international branches, however, is to the banks of the United States and their foreign branches, calling into question the role of the United States financial system. As a result, the indictments focused solely on the transactions that took place in the United States.

Choosing the Charges

Federal laws in the United States do not make commercial or private-to-private bribery illegal. In spite of the factual matrix's suggestion to the contrary, the people were not formally charged in the indictment with bribery. The Department of Justice has accused a number of high-ranking individuals who were not public servants because FIFA, CONMEBOL, and CONCACAF are all registered as private organisations in their respective States. Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, US federal laws cover both the bribery of domestic and foreign public officials; however, bribery that only occurs in the private sector is still governed by state law in the country.

In accordance with Article 21 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the United States is a party to a non-mandatory criminalization provision relating to bribery in private companies (UNCAC). The United States also performed a self-evaluation of its laws pertaining to bribery in private sector organisations and discovered that the aforementioned illegal activity is already covered by their civil and criminal legislation, which can be used to handle complaints.

This is one of the primary factors that made it possible for the federal authorities to pursue the accused without any obstacles, despite the absence of any special rules in American law relating to bribery committed only by members of the private sector. The Eastern District of New York, the Southern District of Florida, etc., are all specifically mentioned in each count of the indictment as being the alleged locations of the wire fraud or money laundering. The prosecutors are upholding the territoriality concept of international law by doing this.

The Omitted Charges

The FIFA officials were not charged with a count of a charge related to the choice of the venue for the FIFA World Cup that was planned to be held in 2018–2022, which later turned out to be a controversy. The primary justification offered by the federal agencies that brought the charges was that such alleged transactions in the choice of venue did not involve American banking institutions. The locations for the FIFA World Cup Championships were picked individually, each six years in advance, between 1984 and 2004. South Africa was chosen as the host nation for the FIFA World Cup in 2004 using the same process.

However, concurrently, as part of the same transaction, the processes for site selection were amended to give the FIFA Executive Committee the power to choose the host city for the following two FIFA World Cup editions, 2018 and 2020, in the year 2010 itself. With the exception of Qatar (classified as high risk) and Russia, every site was finally given a low risk rating (rated as medium risk). Qatar is ranked 166th in terms of land area, while Russia is the largest country in the world. This sheikhdom, which is a part of the United Arab Emirates, lacks a significant football tradition, an indigenous football fan base, and teams who play there have never advanced to the World Cup.

One interesting fact about Qatar is that it is predicted that the temperature would fluctuate over 45 degrees celsius while the World Cup is being played there. In addition to this, Qatar does not have a sufficient number of football stadiums, which may make it a tempting target for regional terrorists. The Ethics Committee conducted an internal investigation to look into the claims of bribery. To imagine that envelopes full of cash ($40,000) are handed in exchange for votes for a World Cup host, however, is naive, according to Committee Chairman Hans Eckert.

Was it really a Presidential Election or a Ploy to Legitimise Keeping the Crooks in Power?

The FIFA presidential election was marked by a number of issues, one of which involved a candidate who was purportedly suspected of buying off prospective voters from a certain union. In March 2011, Qatari citizen and FIFA Executive Committee member Mohammed bin Hammam opposed Sepp Blatter's bid for the position of FIFA President. Mohammed bin Hammam scheduled a meeting with the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) from May 10 to May 11, 2011, to advance his campaign. Then, Vice-President of FIFA and President of CONCACAF Jack Warner said that there were gifts for the CFU representatives for each national association. CONCACAF is the organisation that includes North America and the Caribbean.

Each delegate received a brown packet containing $40,000 in cash. After the scam was uncovered, Jack Warner was forced to leave his roles at various levels, and Mohammed bin Hammam was forced to withdraw his application. Additionally, he was the focus of an Ethics Committee investigation, which approved his lifetime ban. Sepp Blatter was unanimously reappointed as FIFA President as a result of the entire sequence of events.

The COPA AMERICA Scheme

One of the most watched sporting events in the world is the Copa América. It can be inferred from the fact that over five billion people watched the competition in total in 2011, according to estimates. For $1.7 million, the whole world's commercial rights to the 1987 Copa América were sold. Since 1986, Traffic Sports has had a monopoly on the commercial rights to one of the largest football tournaments in the world. One of the Copa América's special events, called Copa América Centenario, was held in the United States in 2016 to commemorate the tournament's 100th anniversary. The event brought in a staggering 112.5 million dollars in revenue.

The Traffic Sports company was charged with using bribery to gain exclusive rights to the Copa America. Up to nine other national football association presidents, including the then-presidents of the Brazilian and Argentine organisations, as well as two CONMEBOL presidents are allegedly among those who received bribes from Traffic Sports executives and businesses connected to them. The allegations brought against the defendant were connected to racketeering (Title 18, USC, Section 1952), wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy (Title 18, USC, Sections 1343 and 1349), and money laundering and money laundering conspiracy (Title 18, USC, Sections 1343 and 1349). (Title 18, USC, Sections 1956 and 1957).

The elements of wire fraud, in particular, are:

1. the defendant voluntarily and intentionally devised or participated in a scheme to defraud another of money;

2. the defendant did so with the intent to defraud;

3. it was reasonably foreseeable that interstate wire communications would be used; and

4. the inter-State wire communications were actually used.

Lack of Accountability and Corporate Governance on FIFA's Behalf

Due to the FIFA's poor corporate governance, it is impossible for it to operate according to such principles as corporate accountability in the present day. Given that FIFA is a multibillion dollar organisation that controls the football world, the lack of corporate governance and accountability has become a critical issue. Since politics and sport have traditionally been seen as unrelated, scholars have contended that FIFA officials have been able to avoid consequences. Sadly, in light of the recent US indictments, it appears that these expectations are more reflective of idealistic emotion than actuality.

Since the FIFA Congress operates under the "one member, one vote" principle, structural issues have been noted. Members of the Congress from a few small, economically challenged States are vulnerable to corruption and bribery by more prosperous States. It shows how FIFA struggles to strike a balance between preserving democratic systems and preventing the exploitation of such processes as intended by FIFA rules. The following problems can be seen in FIFA's aforementioned democratic structure:

• Football power within smaller countries naturally rests in the hands of a select few. The smaller the group in which power is vested, the more susceptible a country’s votes are to corruption and bribery as evidenced by the US indictments.

• Even legitimate funding from FIFA has the potential to influence votes of smaller member States, because not only does a relatively small amount of funding go a long way in smaller nations, but money that is earmarked for development projects can easily be allocated elsewhere, including the pockets of football officials.

• Even though FIFA attempted to limit the president's authority, the organization's lax approach to corporate accountability had no positive impact on how well it operated. Despite the fact that FIFA is associated with industry behemoths like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Visa, and Adidas, none appear eager to take action beyond making public pronouncements about their concerns. Additionally, due to football's enormous popularity around the world and the fact that spectators care more about what occurs on the field than how the governing body operates, reputational accountability for public officials is doubtful.

Things that FIFA Should Keep in Mind

It has been noted that the FIFA has actively supported the "culture of corruption" by ignoring the flaws in its structural design and taking a casual attitude toward the adjustments it requires. Bribery, fraud, and corruption are now frequent occurrences when FIFA is doing its duties. Because of their economic power, those who violate the law will often escape punishment because it will not have a significant impact on them. FIFA cannot be transformed from inside, according to Michael Garcia, the former chair of the Investigative Committee of the FIFA Ethics Committee, who resigned in disgust. The star of English football, David Beckham, also denounced and called the FIFA corruption disgusting.

Following are some adjustments that have been proposed to help FIFA exit this precarious situation:

• Increasing corporate responsibility in the operation of FIFA may be possible through strengthening Swiss laws, which are the framework by which it is regulated. The investigation that the United States and Switzerland are conducting is a necessary first step in recognising the same. A new law, appropriately dubbed "Lex FIFA" or "the FIFA law," was approved by the Swiss Parliament in September 2015 and tightens the existing anti-corruption regulations by making the offer or acceptance of bribes a crime. The Swiss Parliament passed a bill in December 2014 that tightens the scrutiny that can be placed on sports executives' financial accounts. As a result, the presidents of sports organisations, including FIFA, are now considered "politically exposed people" and are vulnerable to corruption probes.

• The introduction of anti-bribery legislation that only apply to private individuals can support the prosecution carried out by the United States. According to academics, the enactment of a federal statute making commercial or private-to-private bribery illegal could improve prosecutors' capacity to pursue this type of behaviour, especially if Congress gave the law an extraterritorial reach.

• Internal reforms: The FIFA must also collaborate with other organisations to implement a structural change that will fortify its legal system's ability to prosecute such offences. Making officials declare their annual salary and overhauling the "one nation, one vote system" are two significant changes that can be made.

To safeguard the interests of football as well as to reduce the unethical and criminal behaviour that exists within the FIFA system, it is necessary to restructure the organisation. In order to maintain football as a "beautiful game" both on and off the field, it is past the time that the regulatory structure that supports the sport be tightened.