Soccer Rat! The inside story of how Chuck Blazer, ex-U.S. soccer executive and FIFA bigwig, became a confidential informant for the FBI
New York City's Blazer, a former member of the FIFA Executive Committee and a top boss for CONCACAF, gathered information on some of international soccer's most powerful figures.
The most crucial Olympic ring of the 2012 London Games was a simple keychain, wired for sound and presented to top international soccer executive Chuck Blazer — a cooperating witness for federal law enforcement agents.
The corrupt and corpulent Blazer, once the sport’s No. 1 powerbroker in the United States, is alleged to have collected untold millions during his 20-year reign — running up a staggering $29 million in credit card charges to help fuel his extravagant lifestyle, which included a pricey Trump Tower apartment for his cats.
But a wide-ranging Daily News investigation revealed the feds flipped the 450-pound Blazer, who at the behest of the FBI and IRS discreetly placed his keychain — a tiny microphone embedded in its specially altered fob — on a nearby table as a parade of international figures visited Blazer at various venues, including the London Olympics.
Blazer’s cooperation provided American criminal investigators in the Eastern District of New York a rare window into the shadowy financing of international soccer, a world notorious for its corruption and lavish excess.
The News, based on interviews and a review of previously unreported documents, found:
• Blazer failed to pay income taxes for more than a decade while hauling in tens of millions of dollars, a discovery the feds used to threaten him with prosecution and convert him into a cooperating witness beginning in 2011.
• While serving as secretary general of CONCACAF, the federation that oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, he misallocated funds and misused assets — using homes in New York, Miami and the Bahamas as perks of his high-level position.
• Before traveling to the London games under the thumb of American criminal investigators, Blazer emailed Russian, Hungarian, Australian and American soccer officials to arrange meetings the feds wanted him to secretly record.
• Investigations here and around the world could lead to criminal charges, shaking the upper echelons of FIFA, the Switzerland-based international governing body of soccer, the richest and most powerful sporting association on the planet.
At the middle of it all was the Falstaffian figure of Blazer, who came to inhabit a world of private jets, famous friends, secret island getaways, offshore bank accounts and so much fine food and drink that he eventually needed a fleet of mobility scooters to move from feast to feast.
Blazer, now 69 and gravely ill with colon cancer, emerged 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. Closer to home, the feds are collaborating on the case pursued by Brooklyn federal prosecutors, sources told The News.
“We cannot confirm, deny or comment on any such case,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York.
The investigation, according to sources, is believed to include a grand jury and has generated requests sent to subjects in foreign jurisdictions including Zurich, home to FIFA’s opulent, heavily secured headquarters, where Swiss banking secrecy laws have long protected massive business deals from public scrutiny.
Delia Fischer, head of media for FIFA, told The News, “We never had any request from the American law enforcement in regards to (Blazer’s cooperation with the U.S. government).”
Those no doubt shaken by Blazer’s choice to cooperate with investigators include members of FIFA’s powerful executive committee, known as the “Ex-co,” of which Blazer himself was a member from 1996 to 2013.
The movers and shakers receiving emailed invites to meet with Blazer while he was staying in a suite at London’s five-star May Fair hotel in the summer of 2012 included the men in charge of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids from Russia and Australia. Among those who got Blazer’s insistent notes were Alexey Sorokin, head of the Russian bid; Frank Lowy, the head of the Australian bid; Anton Baranov, a secretary for Vitaly Mutko, chairman of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia local organizing committee; and International Fencing Federation President Vitaly Logvin.
Peter Hargitay, a Hungarian adviser to longtime FIFA president Sepp Blatter and other top soccer officials, was also contacted for a sitdown with Blazer.
Not everyone accepted Blazer’s request to meet.
Alan Rothenberg, an influential figure in bringing the World Cup to the United States in 1994, sent Blazer his regrets. “Chuck, I’m not coming to London,” he wrote in an email. “Let’s talk when you come back. We, too, enjoyed our visit in L.A. I look forward to seeing you again.”
Blazer’s cooperation extended far beyond his undercover work out of his posh London hotel. Among documents The News has seen is a confidential list of 44 names of top soccer executives, including Blatter. Blazer understood those were the people whose phone calls and emails agents meant to intercept, according to a source. The agents had access to Blazer’s Rolodex, a veritable who’s who of world soccer.
Blazer was interviewed not only by law enforcement but by the global-risk management firm run by former FBI director Louis Freeh, commissioned in 2011 to probe a voting scandal involving FIFA executive Mohammed bin Hammam’s attempt to buy the organization’s presidency.
Blazer, after resigning from FIFA’s Ex-co in the summer of 2013, disappeared from the world soccer stage. Visited at a medical center north of the city where he’s undergoing cancer treatment, he declined to discuss any aspect of the massive probe.
“I just can’t talk about that,” the one-time Westchester County soccer dad said through a bushy beard streaked with white.
It’s an unexpected end for Blazer, who operated with high-flying impunity for decades, inhabiting a world of private jets, famous friends, secret island getaways, offshore bank accounts and two Trump Tower apartments with sweeping views of Central Park and the crenellations of The Plaza hotel.
CONCACAF’s offices took up the entire 17th floor, but Blazer often worked from two apartments where he lived on the 49th floor in $18,000-per-month digs for himself and an adjoining $6,000 retreat largely for his unruly cats, according to a source.
“He lived like there was no tomorrow,” said one source. “He ate and drank whatever he pleased. He probably thought he’d be gone before anybody noticed what he had helped himself to.”
Blazer’s career as a federal undercover began on a November evening in 2011. The morbidly obese businessman was zipping along Fifth Ave. to a pricey Manhattan restaurant aboard one of his motorized scooters — a typical night on the town for Blazer, a regular at coveted Table 4 in Elaine’s, the since-shuttered Upper East Side celebrity and media hangout.
Trailing the big man were federal agents — one from the FBI and the other from the IRS. They were pursuing Blazer “like hit men,” an associate of the soccer big-wig would later say.
“We can take you away in handcuffs now — or you can cooperate,” one of the agents allegedly told Blazer.
Their leverage: More than a decade of unpaid taxes on his multimillion-dollar income. Using forensic accounting techniques, investigators working on a 2013 integrity report commissioned by CONCACAF had mapped out two decades of financial chicanery Blazer used to keep his income off the books.
Eight months later, Blazer was approaching colleagues in London with his James Bond-style keychain. IRS spokeswoman Linda Lowery would not say whether Blazer was the subject of a criminal investigation. An FBI special agent who first approached Blazer in November 2011 did not return a call from The News.
When Blazer, after going to work for the feds, griped that his meetings with the FBI and IRS were hurting his business dealings, he received a blunt reply: “This is your business now.”
Before the London Games, Blazer also complained that the simple act of tossing the keychain on a table was beneath a man of his stature. But the FBI won that argument, too.
Documents reviewed exclusively by The News showed the government threat against Blazer had plenty of teeth. A Social Security benefits summary shows he failed to declare income from at least 1992-98, a period when he oversaw the 1994 World Cup — the first hosted by the U.S. — at a time marked by the historic rise of the U.S. women's national team.
Blazer got at least $21.6 million in compensation between 1990 and 1998 running CONCACAF. He allegedly brought in much more through a tangled web of income from commissions, offshore companies and massive expenses paid for by CONCACAF. According to evidence in CONCACAF's 2013 Integrity Report, Blazer and other senior CONCACAF employees used credit cards linked to Blazer’s personal American Express card to rack up a staggering $29 million in charges over a period of seven years, resulting in a maze of CONCACAF expenses and his personal charges.
Blazer misappropriated at least $15 million in compensation payments from CONCACAF, including unauthorized payments of more than $11 million in commissions, $3.5 million in fees, and more than $837,000 in rent expenses, the report charged.
According to one source, the feds also held racketeering charges over Blazer’s head, claims possibly built on financial irregularities and the vast amounts of money that passed through the multitude of offshore banking accounts and companies Blazer controlled or maintained for two decades.
Before the London Games, Blazer also complained that the simple act of tossing the keychain on a table was beneath a man of his stature. But the FBI won that argument, too.
Documents reviewed exclusively by The News showed the government threat against Blazer had plenty of teeth. A Social Security benefits summary shows he failed to declare income from at least 1992-98, a period when he oversaw the 1994 World Cup — the first hosted by the U.S. — at a time marked by the historic rise of the U.S. women's national team.
Blazer got at least $21.6 million in compensation between 1990 and 1998 running CONCACAF. He allegedly brought in much more through a tangled web of income from commissions, offshore companies and massive expenses paid for by CONCACAF. According to evidence in CONCACAF's 2013 Integrity Report, Blazer and other senior CONCACAF employees used credit cards linked to Blazer’s personal American Express card to rack up a staggering $29 million in charges over a period of seven years, resulting in a maze of CONCACAF expenses and his personal charges.
Blazer misappropriated at least $15 million in compensation payments from CONCACAF, including unauthorized payments of more than $11 million in commissions, $3.5 million in fees, and more than $837,000 in rent expenses, the report charged.
According to one source, the feds also held racketeering charges over Blazer’s head, claims possibly built on financial irregularities and the vast amounts of money that passed through the multitude of offshore banking accounts and companies Blazer controlled or maintained for two decades.
According to a 2011 report prepared by the Freeh Group, bin Hammam gave a short presentation and fielded questions before directing officials to a conference room where each would receive a gift for attending.
“I opened the envelope, which was stapled, and stacks of $100 bills fell out of the envelope and onto the table,” said Frederick Lunn, vice president of the Bahamas Football Association (BFA), in an affidavit obtained by The News. “I was stunned to see this cash. I asked them what it was and it was $40,000. They said it was a gift from the CFU.”
Lunn, who declined the “gift,” said in his affidavit that he was not authorized to accept such payments and that he was flying through the United States on his way home — where he would have to declare his windfall.
He was instructed to keep his mouth shut about the cash.
Word of the “gifts” reached Blazer through Lunn, who not only reported the exchange to the BFA president but photographed the cash inside a brown envelope. Blazer had little choice but to turn Warner in to FIFA, lest he be seen as a co-conspirator. He reported Warner’s possible violations of FIFA’s ethics code to the soccer body’s secretary general, Jerome Valcke.
Fearing the wrath of Warner and his allies, Blazer began moving computers from place to place, often conducting business from the edge of his bed, wearing only his boxers and an oversized Ralph Lauren polo shirt. CONCACAF employees scurried up and down the elevators to get their marching orders and obtain his signatures.
Warner ripped the ensuing investigation by Freeh’s group as “a farce,” and resigned all his soccer posts before he could be banned for life. FIFA’s ethics committee banned bin Hammam, but not before Qatar secured the 2022 World Cup, a stunning Dec. 2, 2010, decision announced by Blatter and instantly viewed around the world as evidence of rampant corruption in the bidding process.
The Middle East country had no venues, little soccer tradition, and summer heat so intense that the global competition could be moved to the winter — opposite the Winter Olympics and the Champions League tournament.
FIFA was forced to commission an investigation by former federal prosecutor Michael Garcia, once the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Garcia has conducted a lengthy investigation of the suspicious 2010 executive committee vote that awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments to Russia and Qatar. Blazer is not believed to have cooperated with Garcia’s probe.
Blazer anticipated Warner would find a way to retaliate for a clear act of treason: The two were thick as thieves for years. According to one source familiar with both, the pair spoke constantly, socialized frequently, hit the strip clubs in tandem, and shared in the easy money flowing around them.
Some in Blazer’s circle believe Warner sicced the feds on him, suggesting they take a close look at his tax returns. Others say Blazer was in the feds’ sights for years; he had socialized with at least one FBI agent who attended Blazer’s 60th birthday party at Elaine’s in 2005, according to sources.
It is unclear if the agent was investigating Blazer at the time.
Garcia’s 350-page report is in the hands of FIFA’s ethics committee’s co-chairman, who has promised to make parts of the report public in a “statement” by mid-November.
“The statement will contain an overview of the investigation report, a summary of the main findings, conclusions and recommendations of the report, as well as a brief evaluation of the same,” said Hans-Joachim Eckert of Germany on Oct. 17.
“Publishing the report in full would actually put the FIFA ethics committee and FIFA itself in a very difficult situation legally.”
The report could prove a watershed for FIFA, forcing the same kind of reforms that swept the International Olympic Committee after the Salt Lake City bid scandal before the 2002 Winter Games.
Blazer might not be the worst rogue to ever troll the FIFA board, and some actually believe he deserves credit for helping usher the U.S. into global soccer — putting the country on a path to parity with the sport’s powers.
Supporters describe him as a watchdog who reported longtime sidekick Warner’s role in Bin Hammam’s attempt to buy the FIFA presidency, knowing his decision was made to his own detriment. “He was absolutely a whistleblower,” insisted one source.
But another person familiar with Blazer’s behavior suggested the soccer snitch was just intoxicated by power and cash.
As chairman of FIFA’s marketing and TV committee, Blazer helped nail a deal with Univision and ESPN that paid FIFA $425 million for the rights to televise the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. That represented newfound riches in the much-celebrated discovery of a hungry American audience and the accompanying television money that would line pockets and lead to what may become an unprecedented prosecution of those who lined up at the trough.
“You feel like you’re the king of the world in that circuit,” said a source. “And it’s all for soccer.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer/soccer-rat-ex-u-s-soccer-exec-chuck-blazer-fbi-informant-article-1.1995761Unusually good journalism from the New York Daily News. FIFA is definitely corrupt, but it's probably got nothing on CONCACAF!
