Former Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) executive member Chuck Blazer, once a close friend and confidant of Jack Warner, spent months compiling information for the FBI and IRS with secret devices hidden on his person, the New York Daily News has reported.
In an expose over the weekend, the paper reported that Blazer secretly taped conversation with officials from Fifa and other top sporting bodies with recording devices since 2011, after he agreed to help the FBI. Blazer’s cooperation can reportedly help the authorities secure criminal charges against powerful current and former Fifa executives.
It said Blazer, now 69 and gravely ill with colon cancer, is at the epicenter of a sprawling criminal investigation in which authorities are angling to link fraud and money-laundering to the highest levels of soccer around the world ahead of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
His surreptitious assistance over the last three years coincided with a series of internally commissioned corruption investigations that stretch from the Caribbean to Zurich, from Australia to Moscow to Qatar, the small Arab nation playing host to the 2022 World Cup. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in New York neither confirmed nor denied the report when contacted by the paper.
The investigation, it said, is believed to include a grand jury and has generated requests sent to subjects in foreign jurisdictions including Zurich, home to Fifa, where Swiss banking secrecy laws have long protected massive business deals from public scrutiny. Delia Fischer, head of media for Fifa, told the paper, “We never had any request from the American law enforcement in regards to (Blazer’s cooperation with the US government).”
Those who would be shaken by Blazer’s help to the FBI and IRS include members of Fifa’s powerful executive committee, of which Blazer and Warner were members during Blazer’s tenure from 1996 to 2013. The paper visited Blazer for comment but he reportedly refused, saying, “I just can’t talk about that.” The FBI reportedly used Blazer’s failure to pay taxes on undeclared income as leverage to lure him into helping them.
The report said the investigation was facilitated after Blazer and Warner were ousted from Concacaf in 2011 and the body launched an investigation which produced a 144-page integrity report that accused the duo of committing fraud against the organisation, breaching their fiduciary duties, violating Concacaf and Fifa statutes, misappropriating funds and violating US tax laws.
Their sackings followed a Caribbean Football Union meeting which Warner hosted at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Trinidad, where then Fifa presidential candidate Mohammed bin Hammam allegedly handed out envelopes stuffed with $40,000 cash in a bid to unseat Sepp Blatter atop Fifa. Fifa subsequently banned Bin Hammam while Warner resigned.