Top FIFA and confederation officials ran a decades-long bribery scheme to sell off soccer's media rights and tournament hosting
Where the evidence lands: SupportedThat senior officials of FIFA and its regional confederations, principally CONCACAF (North and Central America and the Caribbean) and CONMEBOL (South America), operated for decades as a corrupt enterprise, soliciting and accepting more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks from sports-marketing companies in exchange for the lucrative media and marketing rights to tournaments, and taking bribes to steer votes on the hosting of major events including World Cups. US prosecutors charged the scheme as racketeering, and the record of guilty pleas, convictions and administrative bans that followed establishes it as a documented, organized bribery network rather than a rumor.
Believed by: Treated as established fact after the indictments, the guilty pleas and the resignations that followed; the residual dispute is narrow and legal, over which specific charges survive appeal and which bid-related allegations were ever proven in court
The full story
The dawn raid in Zurich
The image that fixed the scandal in the public memory was a bedsheet. On the morning of 27 May 2015, Swiss plainclothes police entered the Baur au Lac, a five-star hotel on the shore of Lake Zurich where FIFA officials had gathered ahead of the organization's annual congress, and led several of them out. Hotel staff held up white linens to screen the arrests from the cameras already waiting outside. The men were detained at the request of prosecutors thousands of miles away, in Brooklyn.
Hours later, the US Department of Justice explained why. It unsealed a 47-count indictment charging 14 defendants, 9 soccer officials and 5 sports-marketing executives, with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies. Investigators from the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation laid out a scheme they said had run for roughly 24 years and moved more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks. The defendants included two current FIFA vice presidents and the current and former presidents of CONCACAF, the confederation for North and Central America and the Caribbean.
Unlike most stories in this archive, the outline just given is not a claim to be weighed against a debunk. It is the documented record, much of it later admitted in open court by the people involved. The task of this file is not to decide whether the corruption happened. It is to report accurately what was proven, to keep it apart from what was merely alleged, and to preserve the presumption of innocence for anyone the courts did not convict.
What the Justice Department actually charged
The strength of this case is that almost every load-bearing fact sits on the record from official sources or from the defendants' own guilty pleas, not from inference. Start with the shape of the scheme. Prosecutors did not allege a single bad deal; they charged a racketeering enterprise, the same legal framework built for organized crime, in which soccer officials treated their positions as a stream of bribes to be harvested.
The mechanism was money for rights. Most of the charged conduct involved officials of CONCACAF and CONMEBOL, the South American confederation, taking bribes and kickbacks from sports-marketing companies in exchange for the media and marketing rights to tournaments such as the Copa America and the Gold Cup. Those rights were worth enormous sums, and the executives who wanted them, prosecutors said, paid to get them. A separate strand concerned bribes tied to the hosting of major events, the decisions about which country would stage a tournament.
The proven crime is corruption over commercial contracts and hosting votes. That is a different thing from fixing the score of a match, and the difference is the whole discipline of the case.
Then came the reckoning, and it was concrete. The case did not end with the first indictment: a superseding indictment in December 2015 charged 16 more officials, and further indictments followed in 2017 and 2020. Over the full prosecution, 27 individual defendants pleaded guilty, along with 4 corporate entities, and additional companies, including banks, acknowledged their roles through deferred- and non-prosecution agreements. US authorities went on to return hundreds of millions of dollars in forfeited funds to the soccer bodies recognized as victims of the fraud. This is not a case that needs embellishing.
The insider who wore a wire
Cases this large usually turn on someone who was inside the room, and this one did. Chuck Blazerwas an American soccer administrator who served as general secretary of CONCACAF from 1990 to 2011 and sat on FIFA's executive committee from 1997 to 2013. He lived lavishly, kept an apartment in Trump Tower, and, it turned out, had not been paying his taxes.
That last detail is how the whole edifice began to crack. When IRS Criminal Investigation came after his unreported income, Blazer faced the choice cooperating witnesses always face, and in 2011 he began working with US authorities. Reporting later described him carrying a concealed recording device to soccer events, gathering evidence against the colleagues he had spent decades alongside. In November 2013 he pleaded guilty, under seal, to 10 counts including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.
His admissions were specific and damning. Blazer acknowledged helping to arrange bribes connected to the hosting of the 1998 and 2010 World Cups and to the sale of CONCACAF Gold Cup broadcast rights. FIFA banned him from football for life in 2015, and he died in 2017. It is worth being clear-eyed about who he was: not a whistleblower acting on principle, but a participant who had profited from the corruption and cooperated only once cornered. That does not weaken the record; sworn admissions from a central insider, corroborated by documents and money flows, are exactly what turns a suspicion into a case.
The fall of Blatter, and the limits of the case
The most powerful man in world soccer did not survive the week. Sepp Blatter had just been re-elected FIFA president when the arrests landed, and on 2 June 2015 he announced he would step down, calling for a “profound overhaul” of the organization. It was a stunning fall. But precision matters here, because this is where honest reporting has to resist the pull of a tidy story.
Blatter was not charged in the US criminal case.His downfall came instead through FIFA's own ethics committee, which in December 2015 banned him and UEFA president Michel Platini from football for eight years over a 2 million Swiss franc payment FIFA had made to Platini in 2011. That was an internal, administrative sanction, later reduced on appeal, and both men denied any wrongdoing throughout.
The distinction became sharper still in 2022, when a Swiss federal court acquitted both Blatter and Platiniof criminal fraud over the same payment. So the public ends up with two official records that do not fully agree: a football-governance body that found an ethics breach, and a criminal court that found no fraud. Both are real. Blurring them into a single verdict of “convicted” would misstate the record and deny two men the presumption of innocence a court explicitly granted them. The organized bribery elsewhere in the case is substantiated; the story of these two particular figures is more tangled, and the file reports it as such.
Russia, Qatar, and alleged versus proven
No part of the scandal draws more heat than the two most valuable prizes in the sport: the 2018 World Cup, awarded to Russia, and the 2022 World Cup, awarded to Qatar in a 2010 vote that stunned observers. It is tempting, given everything else that was proven, to fold these into the same certainty. The evidence does not yet let us.
What exists is an allegation in a 2020 US indictment that bribes were paid to some officials to secure votes for Russia and Qatar. That is a serious charge from serious prosecutors, and it deserves to be reported. But an indictment is an accusation, not a finding of fact. Russia and Qatar have denied any wrongdoing, and no organizer of either bid has been convicted of buying the tournament in that case. The honest position is that individual officials' broader corruption is proven, while the specific claim that these two World Cups were awarded through proven bribery of the host bids remains, for now, a charged allegation.
Distrust of FIFA is well earned. It is still not a substitute for a conviction, and the two should never be quietly swapped for each other.
The case's legal edges have frayed in other ways too, which cuts against treating any of it as untouchable. In 2023 a judge vacated the convictions of a former Fox executive and an Argentine media company, ruling that the honest-services fraud statute did not reach foreign commercial bribery; an appeals court reinstated those convictions in 2025; and prosecutors later stepped back from parts of the case as Justice Department priorities shifted, with some charges dismissed. None of this unwinds the mountain of guilty pleas. It simply marks the boundary between what is settled and what is still being fought over, and an accurate account keeps that boundary visible.
Where the evidence lands
On the core claim, that senior FIFA and confederation officials ran a long-standing scheme to take bribes and kickbacks in exchange for soccer's media and marketing rights and for hosting votes, the verdict is substantiated. This is not a contested reading of ambiguous facts. It is the outcome that federal indictments, 27 individual guilty pleas, 4 corporate guilty pleas, bank admissions, Swiss arrests, a cooperating insider, and FIFA's own recognition as a defrauded victim all confirm. The scale, the mechanism, and the enterprise are established.
The honest account then adds the caveats that protect the truth from overreach. Some of the most explosive specifics, above all the vote-buying alleged around the Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 bids, rest on charges rather than convictions, and both nations deny them. A handful of convictions have been vacated, reinstated, or dropped as courts weigh how far US law reaches into foreign conduct. And the fall of Blatter and Platini ran through FIFA's ethics process and a Swiss courtroom that acquitted them, not through the US racketeering case.
One more line worth drawing, because it is easy to erase: the corruption proven here was about money and access, the selling of contracts and the steering of hosting decisions. It is not evidence that matches on the field are scripted or that scores are fixed from above, a separate and unproven claim examined in this archive's file on the “scripted” World Cup. The bribery is real, documented and admitted. Keep it at full strength, and resist the temptation to stretch it into things the record does not support.
What's still unexplained
- Were the 2018 and 2022 World Cups actually awarded through proven bribery? The 2020 indictment alleges vote-buying for Russia and Qatar, and both deny it, but no host-bid organizer has been convicted of it in this case. The allegation is serious and charged; it is not the same as an established fact, and the file keeps it in the 'alleged' column.
- How far does US law reach into foreign commercial bribery? The vacating and reinstatement of convictions over the honest-services statute, and the later dismissal of some charges, show that the legal foundation for parts of the case is genuinely contested, even as the underlying bribery is admitted.
- How much corruption predates or outlasts what was charged? The prosecution captured a specific window and specific defendants. Whether the full scope of decades of dealmaking has been accounted for, or whether reforms have actually ended it, is not something the indictments can answer.
- Can an administrative ethics ban and a criminal acquittal both be right? Blatter and Platini were banned by FIFA yet acquitted of fraud by a Swiss court, leaving two official records that point in different directions on the same payment. The tension is real and unresolved in the public mind.
Point by point
The claim: US prosecutors charged FIFA and confederation officials with taking more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks.
What the record shows: Documented in the legal record. The 27 May 2015 indictment ran to 47 counts against 14 defendants and charged racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies in a scheme prosecutors dated back roughly 24 years. Later indictments added more defendants. Across the whole prosecution, 27 individual defendants and 4 corporate entities pleaded guilty, and additional companies, including banks, admitted involvement through deferred- and non-prosecution agreements. This is not a claim resting on inference; it is a body of sworn charges met by a long series of admissions of guilt.
The claim: The bribes bought the media and marketing rights to tournaments and, in places, the votes on where events would be hosted.
What the record shows: Established through the indictments and pleas. Most of the charged schemes involved soccer officials taking bribes and kickbacks from sports-marketing executives in exchange for the media and marketing rights to CONCACAF and CONMEBOL competitions, such as the Copa America and the Gold Cup. Separately, cooperating witness Chuck Blazer admitted facilitating bribes connected to the hosting of the 1998 and 2010 World Cups. The distinction matters: this is proven corruption over commercial contracts and hosting decisions, which is a different thing from fixing the score of a match on the field.
The claim: Chuck Blazer was a genuine cooperating insider, not a rumor-monger.
What the record shows: On the record. Blazer was CONCACAF's general secretary from 1990 to 2011 and sat on FIFA's executive committee from 1997 to 2013, placing him at the center of the enterprise. After IRS Criminal Investigation pursued his taxes, he became a cooperating witness in 2011 and pleaded guilty in November 2013 to 10 counts. Reporting described him recording fellow officials covertly. FIFA banned him from football for life in 2015. He died in 2017. His plea and cooperation are part of the court record, which is what separates this case from a theory built on hearsay.
The claim: Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini were found corrupt and banned.
What the record shows: Partly true, and worth stating precisely. FIFA's ethics committee banned both men in December 2015 over a 2 million Swiss franc payment, an internal administrative sanction. That is not the same as a US criminal conviction: neither man was charged in the American racketeering case, both denied wrongdoing, and a Swiss federal court later acquitted both of criminal fraud over that payment in 2022. So the ethics bans are real and documented, but the presumption of innocence on the criminal charge held, and the two records should not be blurred together.
The claim: The 2018 (Russia) and 2022 (Qatar) World Cups were bought with bribes.
What the record shows: This is alleged, not proven, and the file treats it that way. A 2020 US superseding indictment alleged that bribes were paid to some officials to secure votes for Russia and Qatar. Russia and Qatar have denied any wrongdoing, and no bid organizer has been convicted of buying those tournaments in that case. Individual officials pleading guilty to broader bribery is documented; the specific claim that these two World Cups were awarded through proven bribery of the host bids remains a charged allegation. Distrust of FIFA is well earned, but an indictment is an accusation, and the presumption of innocence applies until a court says otherwise.
The claim: Every charge stuck and the whole case is legally airtight.
What the record shows: Not quite, and honesty requires saying so. Most of the core is settled by guilty pleas, but some contested convictions have moved through the courts: a 2023 ruling vacated two convictions on the ground that the honest-services fraud statute did not reach foreign commercial bribery, an appeals court reinstated them in 2025, and prosecutors later dropped parts of the case as Justice Department priorities shifted. The organized bribery scheme is substantiated by the mass of admissions; the reach of particular US statutes over foreign conduct is a real and still-litigated legal question.
Timeline
- 2011IRS Criminal Investigation, pursuing Chuck Blazer's unpaid taxes, turns the former CONCACAF general secretary and FIFA executive committee member into a cooperating witness. Facing prosecution, Blazer begins working with US authorities and, according to later reporting, secretly records fellow officials, including at events tied to the 2012 London Olympics.
- 2013-11Blazer pleads guilty under seal in Brooklyn federal court to 10 counts, including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, tax evasion and failing to report foreign bank accounts. He admits facilitating bribes tied to the hosting of the 1998 and 2010 World Cups and to CONCACAF Gold Cup broadcast rights. The plea stays sealed while the wider case is built.
- 2015-05-27Swiss police arrest several officials at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich at US request. The DOJ unseals a 47-count indictment charging 14 defendants (9 soccer officials and 5 sports-marketing executives) with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies. Prosecutors describe more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks for media and marketing rights and for tournament hosting. Guilty pleas by additional individual and corporate defendants are unsealed the same day.
- 2015-06-02Sepp Blatter, re-elected FIFA president days earlier, announces he will step down and calls for a profound overhaul of the organization, saying he will stay until a successor is chosen. He is not among those charged in the US case.
- 2015-12-03A superseding indictment unsealed in Brooklyn charges 16 additional officials, extending the case deeper into CONCACAF and CONMEBOL. Two current FIFA vice presidents are among those arrested in a second round of pre-dawn raids in Zurich.
- 2015-12-21FIFA's independent ethics committee bans Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini from football for eight years (later reduced on appeal) over a 2 million Swiss franc payment FIFA made to Platini in 2011. This is an internal ethics sanction, separate from the US criminal case; both men deny wrongdoing.
- 2016–2020The prosecution widens through further indictments in 2017 and 2020. Over the course of the case, 27 individual defendants and 4 corporate entities plead guilty; several banks acknowledge roles through deferred- or non-prosecution agreements. US authorities begin returning hundreds of millions of dollars in forfeited funds to the defrauded soccer bodies as recognized victims.
- 2020-04A superseding indictment alleges, for the first time in the case, that bribes were paid to secure votes for the awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Russia and Qatar deny any wrongdoing, and these specific vote-buying allegations are charged, not established by any conviction of a bid organizer.
- 2023–2025The legal ground shifts at the margins. In 2023 a judge vacates the convictions of a former Fox executive and an Argentine media firm, holding that the honest-services fraud statute did not reach foreign commercial bribery; in 2025 the Second Circuit reinstates those convictions. Prosecutors later step back from parts of the case as Justice Department priorities change, and some charges are dismissed.
From the case file
The actual records: declassified, released, or leaked. We link straight to each document in its official archive, so you never have to take our word for it. Read the originals yourself.
Nine FIFA Officials and Five Corporate Executives Indicted for Racketeering Conspiracy and Corruption
The Justice Department press release announcing the original 47-count indictment of 14 defendants for racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies. It lays out the more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks tied to media and marketing rights and tournament hosting, and confirms the same-day arrests in Zurich and the unsealing of earlier guilty pleas.
Read the document: U.S. Department of Justice →Sixteen Additional FIFA Officials Indicted for Racketeering Conspiracy and Corruption
The superseding indictment announcement charging 16 more officials, including two then-current FIFA vice presidents, and extending the racketeering case deeper into CONCACAF and CONMEBOL. It documents how the scheme was charged as a 24-year enterprise built on bribes for commercial rights and hosting decisions.
Read the document: U.S. Department of Justice →Other case files that cite the same sources
Supported. This is not an allegation waiting for proof; it is a prosecuted case. On 27 May 2015 US federal authorities unsealed a 47-count indictment charging soccer officials and sports-marketing executives with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering over more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks, and Swiss police arrested several defendants at a Zurich hotel that morning. Dozens of individuals and companies were charged across four years of indictments; 27 individuals and 4 corporate entities pleaded guilty, and banks acknowledged their roles through deferred- and non-prosecution agreements. The core, that officials sold their votes over media and marketing rights and tournament hosting for bribes, is documented and admitted. What remains genuinely open sits at the edges: some allegations (notably vote-buying for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups) rest on the indictment rather than a conviction, and a few convictions have been vacated, reinstated, or dropped as the law and prosecutorial priorities shifted. The organized bribery is substantiated; the presumption of innocence still holds for anyone not convicted.
Reviewed by The Conspiratory Editors · Last reviewed July 20, 2026 · How we rate
Sources
- 1.Nine FIFA Officials and Five Corporate Executives Indicted for Racketeering Conspiracy and Corruption, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs (2015)
- 2.Sixteen Additional FIFA Officials Indicted for Racketeering Conspiracy and Corruption, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs (2015)
- 3.International Soccer Officials Indicted, Federal Bureau of Investigation (2015)
- 4.Justice Department Announces Additional Distribution of Approximately $92 Million to Victims in FIFA Corruption Case, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
- 5.2015 FIFA corruption case, Wikipedia (2026)
- 6.2015 FIFA corruption scandal | Explained, Qatar, & 2022 World Cup, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2025)
- 7.Blazer's plea deal over FIFA corruption revealed, Al Jazeera (2015)
- 8.FIFA ethics committee bans Blatter, Platini for eight years, France 24 (2015)
- 9.Two convictions in FIFA corruption scandal overturned, France 24 (2023)
- 10.Second Circuit Reinstates FIFA Bribery Convictions, Reviving Honest Services Fraud Prosecutions for Foreign Commercial Bribery, Cleary Gottlieb (2025)
Help us investigate
This is a living case file. If you spot an error or know evidence we missed, tell us, and weigh in on where you land.
Where do you land?
Cast your read on this one.
Comments
Add your take. Comments are read and approved by a human before they appear, so keep it on topic and civil. Please do not accuse named, living people of crimes.