See the inspiring stories Come meet us Time to legalize weed?
OPINION
World Cup

Fed's FIFA attack needs bigger guns: Column

So far, Department of Justice holding back heavy artillery.

Gregory J. Wallance
FIFA President Sepp Blatter makes a speech during the opening ceremony of the 65th FIFA Congress in Zurich on Thursday.

The Department of Justice's indictment against nine soccer officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, which regulates soccer worldwide, describes a corruption cesspool at FIFA (five corporate executives were also indicted). For more than two decades, soccer federation officials received $150 million in bribes and kickbacks from sports marketing executives seeking lucrative marketing and media rights to international soccer tournaments, including the World Cup. As FBI Director James Comey put it,

"Undisclosed and illegal payments, kickbacks and bribes became a way of doing business at FIFA."

The charges, however, were not commensurate with the scale of the corruption. Sure, the drama over the arrests and extradition of the accused executives made for worldwide television and headlines. But the corruption cannot be addressed without going after FIFA itself, which so far federal prosecutors have failed to do.

The Justice Department has an effective weapon to wield against FIFA, the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, known as RICO. In fact, the indictment included RICO charges against federation officials. The irony is that RICO, enacted in 1970, was designed to take down entire crime organizations and not just individual members, including seizing the assets of criminal enterprises.

The federal racketeering law was born from law enforcement's frustration that convictions of individual mobsters had not put the Mafia families out of business. "You've got to go after the organization," explained law professor G. Robert Blakey, who drafted RICO. "Individuals commit organized crime, but organizations make it possible. You're in it to destroy a family."

Using the law in the 1980s, federal prosecutors convicted the heads of three New York organized crime families in a case known as the Mafia Commission Trial. But the key allegation was that the crime families themselves were racketeering enterprises, which opened the door to far reaching evidence and harsh sentences. The result was a major blow to organized crime in New York City. In a related case, the prosecutors even persuaded a court to appoint a receiver to take control of a mob-run restaurant, Umberto's Clam House, in downtown Manhattan. The Justice Department has used RICO against corrupt labor unions and forced a then-leading New York City investment firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert, to plead guilty to securities law violations under threat of a draconian RICO indictment.

That's why it's dismaying to see federal prosecutors, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, talk loudly but so far wield a soft stick against FIFA. Comey's statement suggests that the soccer federation is a racketeering enterprise used by employees to line their own pockets. Such systemic wrongdoing could only have happened because FIFA's leadership tolerates a culture of pervasive corruption.

In 2014, FIFA's chief ethics investigator, American lawyer Michael Garcia, resigned in protest because the organization had not acted on his report on corruption in the bid process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup sites, Russia and Qatar, respectively. Garcia suggested that the organization was incapable of reforming itself and charged that FIFA's independent ethics investigator had misrepresented the findings of his report, which the federation refused to release. Indeed, despite the Garcia report and despite the allegations in the federal indictment about corruption in connection with the bidding for the 2010 World Cup, FIFA nonetheless declared Wednesday that "the World Cups 2018 and 2022 will be played in Russia and Qatar."

As Garcia said when he resigned, "No independent governance committee, investigator or arbitration panel can change the culture of an organization."

To be sure, RICO can be a blunt ax, and no one is suggesting that the prosecutors bring RICO charges in order to destroy FIFA. Even so, the threat of asset forfeitures or appointment of a receiver gives the Justice Department considerable leverage. Indeed, as with Drexel Burnham Lambert, Justice likely wouldn't even have had to bring any RICO proceedings. Regardless of FIFA leadership vote Friday, federal prosecutors' work will not be done until they find a way to force the soccer governing body to enact meaningful reforms and get rid of leaders who, at the very least, tolerated the corruption.

Gregory J. Wallance is a former federal prosecutor.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.

Featured Weekly Ad