NEW YORK
Fourteen individuals, including top officials from football's world governing body, were indicted Wednesday on charges of racketeering conspiracy and corruption, U.S. authorities said.
The 47-count indictment alleged that, since 1991, the defendants corrupted international football by engaging in various criminal activities, including fraud, bribery and money laundering.
"Two generations of soccer officials abused their positions of trust for personal gain, frequently through an alliance with unscrupulous sports marketing executives who shut out competitors and kept highly lucrative contracts for themselves through the systematic payment of bribes and kickbacks," the Department of Justice said.
Defendants include officials from the highest echelons of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, the organization responsible for the regulation and promotion of football worldwide.
Two current FIFA vice presidents, Jeffrey Webb and Eugenio Figueredo, as well as leading officials of other soccer governing bodies that operate under the FIFA umbrella, are among those indicted.
Others charged include Eduardo Li, Jack Warner, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Rafael Esquivel, Jose Maria Marin, Nicolas Leoz, Alejandro Burzaco, Aaron Davidson, Jose Margulies and Hugo and Mariano Jinkis.
Earlier Wednesday, Swiss authorities arrested seven of the 14 defendants at the request of the U.S.
Webb, Figueredo, Li, Rocha, Takkas, Esquivel and Marin were arrested in an extraordinary early-morning operation in Zurich.
Also Wednesday morning, a search warrant was executed at the headquarters of CONCACAF, the continental confederation under FIFA headquartered in Miami.
FIFA said in a statement that it "welcomes actions that can help contribute to rooting out any wrongdoing in football".
The defendants “were expected to uphold the rules that keep soccer honest, and protect the integrity of the game,” U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said during a press conference in New York.
“Instead, they corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and enrich themselves,” she added.
Lynch said the defendants used bribes to influence the hosting decision for the 2010 World Cup, which was ultimately awarded to South Africa, marking the first time the tournament would be held on the African continent.
According to the indictment, the 2016 Copa America scheduled to be held in the U.S. was also tainted by bribes.
“Our investigation revealed that what should be an expression of international sportsmanship was used as a vehicle in a broader scheme to line executives’ pockets with bribes totaling $110 million – nearly a third of the legitimate costs of the rights to the tournaments involved,” Lynch said.
Other tournaments mentioned in the indictment include World Cup qualifiers in the North, Central America and the Caribbean region (CONCACAF); the main South American club championship, the Copa Libertadores; and the Gold Cup – a CONCACAF regional championship tournament.
