How the feds took down FIFA | Hacker News Reader

How the feds took down FIFA

espn.go.com

77 pointswglb25 comments

I don't think these investigations depend on corruption or crime, or at least those factors are necessary but not sufficient.

When the government investigates an individual or organization that has long been known to be corrupt, I always think 'why them and why now?' For example, recently they took down a local politician known for corruption for decades; why now? There are other similarly corrupt local politicians; why not them?

Why is the FBI taking down FIFA and not the Catholic Church, which operated a global child rapist protection racket, or Wall Street firms, whose financial fraud harmed billions of people and nearly took down the world economy? FIFA's crimes seem to have relatively minor consequences.

My working hypothesis is that the corrupt lose key political protection and then their enemies pounce. But I don't really know.

I think in this case the difference is that FIFA doesn't yet a lot of political power in the US compared to Europe and South America, but was in the process of significantly expanding its influence to the US, which drew the attention of the investigators who could act without expending domestic political capital. One question often raised in Europe and in particular countries that feel hard done by FIFA, like the UK, is why it took the US to investigate and prosecute when much of the corruption is taking place at our front door. This is largely European, South American, and African corruption that has some US based proxies mixed in that give the US investigations a way in.

Nope, this is a large amount of money, my guess is that someone at the feds said "we want a cut" and someone at FIFA said: "give money to the US feds, they don't even like football (soccer?) that much, why?"

Down votes haha, so predictable, it's so cute when people want to believe their gov is the good one doing things to save the world from corruption. Nope, everything a organization as big as FBI does is because something is damaging them. The church systematically raping children is not more important than your money, sadly.

Yeah, what you're doing right now is called "reverse cargo cult". Not only you know that your fake airplanes are made from straw / your country's government is corrupted but you also claim that the real airplanes are also made from straw / other functional governments are completely corrupted.

The article explains how it happened, they found a way in thru Blazer.

Law enforcement doesn't tackle a case until reasonably confident it can win. At a few points they had to justify the time spent... a lack of unlimited resources, basically.

This is a very good point...

We all have jobs to do, and we all face obstacles, limitations, and hurdles...we all face them daily in whatever work we do...

We know that, and yet we occasionally think that the situation is different elsewhere, for other people in other professions...we hold them to a higher standard than they can possibly meet, a standard we, ourselves, couldn't meet...and criticize them openly when they fail...

I am guilty of this myself...I'm working on it...

I have never done any work for an organization that I thought could not be improved...I sincerely doubt that any of us have...but when I think about the reasons things aren't done better without fail I come to the same conclusion:

Humans who want to do a better job are constrained, by reality...resources--manpower, money, will, intellect, time...

Sometimes we humans fail simply because of our human physical limitations...we're tired...we need time off...

I think that it's very true that those we elect (or hire) to enforce laws simply cannot enforce them all... all the time...the resources simply aren't there...

We wish they were, but that doesn't change the reality...

>not the Catholic Church, which operated a global child rapist protection racket

There's a lot of imprisoned and defrocked priests who would disagree with you.

>or Wall Street firms, whose financial fraud harmed billions of people and nearly took down the world economy?

So which individuals would you prosecute? And for what specific crimes? Making risky and stupid bets is not a crime. Incompetent credit scoring is not a crime. It's easy to paint broad strokes of indignation, it's much harder to prove a criminal case.

I just thought it was somewhat sour grapes that the USA didn't get the World Cup and worst of all Russia got it. Since powerful people were involved in the US and UK bids and I hazard a guess that they were pretty passed off at losing to a bunch of fat bribes.

Whatever the reasons, I'm really glad they are hunting this lot down and trying to clean up football.

Qatar annoyed too many people when they won their bid.

Sometimes money can't buy everyone, and it only takes a few pissed off people to find the person with jurisdiction.

See Lance Armstrong for another example.

International sports and sports bodies tend to be pretty horrible.

This article brands the International Olympic Committee "a foul band reeking of corruption and manipulation."[1] The most recent World Cup in Brazil elicited large protests from the poor who failed to benefit from the development.[2]

[1] https://www.gn.apc.org/blog/meet-ioc-foul-band-reeking-corru...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_protests_in_Brazil

Or rather, how the feds took down FIFA once they spared a second to give a fuck, and even then it was just simpler to do away with all the newfangled investigative wiretap powers and that stuff, pretend its 1900 and give someone a sweet deal for telling them the story.

Remember the Garcia report in 2012 was forced on the FIFA as a result of many many years of grassroots investigative journalism and activism, when the FBI or any other law enforcement body simply didn't bother.

To be fair, the feds got where European authorities long failed to go. In Europe, everyone knew FIFA was rotten at least since the Havelange years, but there was no real attempt at taking down the Blatter mafia from any country.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com