The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal—the biggest international corruption case of recent years, spearheaded by US investigators, involving dozens of countries, and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, including its biggest event, the World Cup.
... FIFA officials and businessmen close to the sport were charged under a racketeering law that allowed prosecutors to cover generations of wrongdoing, from bribery to money laundering, under one indictment. The ongoing U.S. probe has led to dozens of guilty pleas, two trial convictions and the forfeiture of hundreds of millions of dollars ...Red Card, a book that chronicles the U.S. investigation of corruption in soccer.
...a series of scandals began unfurling that revealed Fifa to be even more corrupt than many had realised. Most of the executive-committee (Exco) members who voted in Zurich have since been charged or accused by US authorities of criminal wrongdoing, or sanctioned by Fifa’s ethics committee ... in a curious coincidence, the FBI’s initial tipoff came from Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who in 2016 warned the FBI about purported collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign for the US presidency ... one of Bensinger’s best sources, and therefore a hero of this book — discovered that the US Exco member Chuck Blazer had not filed taxes for at least 17 years. The white-bearded Blazer was as greedy as he was obese.
Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World’s Biggest Sports Scandal, by the BuzzFeed investigative reporter Ken Bensinger, delivers an engrossing and jaw-dropping tale of international intrigue culminating in dozens of individuals and companies associated with professional soccer being brought to justice.
