FIFA Caught Offside as US Tackles Global Graft With Penalties in Mind

The United States demonstrated its global legal reach with arrests of international officials and announcement about efforts to stamp out cross-border bribery and financial corruption in soccer. Nine soccer officials and five marketing executives were named in the probe on racketeering, kickbacks, bribes and money-laundering. “This is a global investigation, and we live in a global marketplace,” said an acting US attorney general in the article by Tom Kutsch for Al Jazeera. “The world is not insular to a particular country any longer.” A US soccer official who previously pled guilty to corruption charges aided the investigation into reports of countries offering cash to sway decisions on where tournaments would be held. The US lost the 2022 World Cup tournament to Qatar. US legal experts, countering questions about the US role, suggested the surprise is that no other country acted sooner. In Kutsch’s report, an associate professor at the University of Richmond School of Law pointed to an “international vacuum” in global enforcement on corruption. – YaleGlobal