January 28 – Speaking at SIGA’s financial integrity forum (FITS) in Lisbon, Portugal, Richard Weber, the former director of the US’s IRSCI (Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation) agency that broke the case that led to the US indictments in 2015 of eventually more than 40 FIFA officials and associates, said that the investigation “is continuing today”.
Outlining the scale of the investigation that began in 2010 around the time that the US lost their bid for the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, Weber outlined how the research of one agent in the Los Angeles field office, a passionate football fan, discovered “a significant tax case against Chuck Blazer” – a Concacaf official and FIFA executive committee member – who had failed to pay US taxes for 25 years.
Blazer had been living large on his income taken in the US, renting a number of apartments in Trump Tower in New York, one being exclusively for his cats. “That’s how much money he had, said Weber.
Having been approached by the FBI outside the Trump Tower building, Blazer after just one meeting agreed to co-operate as an informant.
Weber gave insight into not just the case itself but also the scale and expertise of the IRSCI that has more than 4,000 employees and over 2,700 special agents around the US conducting financial investigations. The agency has been in existence for over 100 years and was the law enforcement agency that brought down Al Capone when other agencies couldn’t.
He said the agency sees transactions across multiple jurisdictions and millions of reports filed, but there is still “too much corruption going on”.
With the 10-year anniversary of the FIFA indictments in May 2015 approaching, Weber has swapped his IRSCI suit for one in private legal practice where he is a partner with law firm Winston & Strawn.
Weber believes that to efficiently combat the corruption “it can’t just be case by case. We need to get the private side, banks and institutions, to work with us in this area. To work with law enforcement (in a way that) is not happening today. Local, state and international organisations must work to together to fight this problem…
“I am convinced there is more that we can do on the private side to fight corruption at all levels.”
Running through the some of the seismic reporting that rocked football in 2015, Weber said: “10 years ago we brought this to public attention. 10 years is a long time. The fact that we were able to shine a bright light on corruption was the right thing to do. At the time there was not much push back from other countries. In the end we had 33 countries working with us.
“A lot of people in the industry were hoping and waiting for something to happen. I do wonder if it has had a long term impact… What else is happening (in terms of criminal investigation). It can’t just be one big case and everyone falls into line. There has to be a constant focus.”
Richard Weber was speaking at the SIGA Financial Integrity and Transparency in Sport Forum (FITS) in Lisbon on Monday. The video of the whole FITS forum can be viewed on the home page of insideworldfootball.com.
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