Former FIFA Executive Admits Accepting Bribe To Vote For South Africa Hosting The World Cup

Photo Credit: Sportsbusinessdaily

Chuck Blazer, Former FIFA executive committee member told a U.S. federal judge that he and others on the governing body’s ruling panel agreed to receive bribes in the votes for the hosts of the 1998 and 2010 World cup.


Three days before Thanksgiving in 2013. In Zurich, FIFA issued a news release announcing that it was fighting match-fixing, and Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s president, celebrated after a Swiss initiative to cap soccer managers’ pay had failed.

Prosecutors unsealed a 40-page transcript Wednesday of the hearing in U.S. District Court on Nov. 25, 2013, when Blazer pleaded guilty to racketeering and other charges.

Blazer, in admitting 10 counts of illegal conduct, told the court of his conduct surrounding the vote that made South Africa the first nation on that continent to host soccer’s premier event.

“Among other things, I agreed with other persons in or around 1992 to facilitate the acceptance of a bribe in conjunction with the selection of the host nation for the 1998 World Cup,” Mr. Blazer told Judge Raymond J. Dearie when he entered his plea in 2013 in United States District Court in Brooklyn.

 “I and others on the FIFA executive committee agreed to accept bribes in conjunction with the selection of South Africa as the host nation for the 2010 World Cup,” and that he “and others agreed to accept bribes and kickbacks in conjunction with the broadcast and other rights” to several Gold Cup tournaments, a regional championship in which the United States competes,Mr. Blazer also said.

South African Football Association president Molefi Oliphant sent a letter to FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke in 2008 asking FIFA to withhold $10 million from the budget of the 2010 World Cup organizers and to use the money to finance a “Diaspora Legacy Programme” under the control of then CONCACAF President Jack Warner. South Africa Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula denies the money was a bribe and says it was an “aboveboard payment” to help soccer development in Caribbean region.

Two other cooperating witnesses in the FIFA case that suggest the kind of agreement Mr. Blazer may have struck. They are Daryan and Daryll Warner, sons of Jack Warner, a politican and businessman from Trinidad and Tobago and the former president of Concacaf, the soccer governing body overseeing North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

 Mr. Blazer, a friend of Mr. Warner’s, was Concacaf’s general secretary from 1990 to 2011, and both were members of FIFA’s governing executive committee for years. The committee’s functions include awarding the hosting rights for the quadrennial World Cup.

Blazer who is now wheelchair-bound, told the court he had received chemotherapy and radiation for rectal cancer, and he also suffered from diabetes and coronary artery disease.

Now 70,Blazer did not identify the country that had offered the bribe at the 2013 hearing, but a charging document unsealed last week said Blazer was present when a representative of Morocco’s bid committee offered a payment in exchange for the support of a FIFA official identified as co-conspirator #1 — believed to be former FIFA and CONCACAF executive Jack Warner, who prosecutors say told Blazer to make arrangements for the delivery of the payment.

Given Mr. Blazer’s bad health prosecutors may have challenges using his testimony against other defendants if Mr. Blazer cannot testify at trial because he has trouble speaking as of last week