The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 6

As Bridget Takyi went to her car to drive to work, Emmanuel Owusu-Ansah was waiting, with his new knife and a can of gas. Blatchford, A15 STRESSFUL EVENTS TAKE TOLL Referendum, male birthrate linked A12 PAGE A6 MONTREAL GAZETTE THURSDAY. MAY 28, 2015 COMMENTARY ff a I FIFA official Walter De Gregorio talks to reporters after Swiss prosecutors opened criminal proceedings against members of soccer's governing body, throwing FIFA deeper into crisis. Several officials were suspended or arrested in a separate corruption probe, ennio leanzakeystone via mfe DAte ms ANALYSIS The World Cup of fraud DECLAff HILL SPECIAL TO POSTMEDIA NEWS It was like something out of a spy novel. The pre-dawn raids on luxury hotels in central Zurich.

The stern-faced policemen banging on doors and bringing out not terrorists but international sports executives. In all, 14 of the soccer world's most connected and influential executives face charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering. The indictment revealed Wednesday by U.S. authorities in New York paints a shocking story of alleged corruption at almost the highest-level of international soccer. The men arrested were the presidents of their own national soccer federations.

They were executives who ran prominent committees of FIFA. They ran the organization of Olympic soccer tournaments, the Confederation Cup, the Gold Cup, even some of the World Cup tournaments themselves. And if you believe the official indictment they were guilty of implementing a widespread network of bribery, kickbacks and financial scams. The indictment itself reads like something out of an undercover mafia story. For example, around the allegations of bribery for the awarding of the World Cupin2010 to South Africa, it reads: "At one point, (Jack) Warner also directed co-conspirator 14 to fly to Paris, France and accept a briefcase containingbundles of U.S.

currency in $10,000 stacks in a hotel room from a high-ranking South African bid committee official." In another purported incident, the president of one Latin American soccer federation is alleged to have solicited a bribe of about $1 million US for the marketing and commercial rights to a major international soccer tournament. At another point, the FBI wired up Chuck Blazer, a former senior executive of FIFA and vice-president of CONCACAF (the regional arm of FIFA that runs soccer in Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean), with a covert sound-recording device and had him tape the conversations of other FIFA executives hoping to catch them saying something incriminating. Overall, the allegations contained in the 164-page indictment show that almost every aspect of FIFA's commercial regime is now under investigation. From the awarding of the World Cup tournaments, to television rights to the purported rigging of the vote of the FIFA presidential election in 2011, U.S.

detectives are looking at all of them. In a news conference Wednesday, the U.S. authorities led by Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the raids and arrests were "just the beginning." Whatever happens in the subsequent investigation and the eventual trial, two key questions emerge. The first is: why did it take U.S. law enforcement to do something? The U.S.

is known for many things but interest in international soccer is not high on many people's lists. SEE HILL OH All Investigation leads to suspensions, arrests of officials Wl Donmer The Qatar selection was so ludicrous that it only stood to reason that voters had taken money. indictment, which says that corruption in the sport is "rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States." FIFA said it "welcomes actions that can help contribute to rooting out any wrongdoing in football," a rather blithe reaction to news that so many of its own officials, including top executives and longtime Blatter loyalists, were charged. The statement went on to point out that the alleged wrongdoing was connected to CONCACAF business, and suggested that FIFA's role in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids remained pure. Precisely no one believes this to be true.

From almost the moment those bids were chosen in 2010, bribery allegations surfaced. The Qatar selection was so ludicrous the blistering heat, the total lack of facilities that it only stood to reason that voters had taken money, rather than a total leave of their senses. By 2012, when a whistleblower said FIFA officials from Africa had accepted $1.5 million each from the Qatar bid in exchange for their votes, FIFA relented and opened an investigation, but one that lacked real powers. SEE STINSON OH All FIFA suspends 11 people, including two vice-presidents, following a U.S. criminal investigation into corruption.

Seven FIFA officials are arrested in Zurich at the behest of the U.S. Department of Justice, which, in all, unveils charges against nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives. They are charged with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies in connection with a 24-year scheme to enrich themselves by corrupting soccer. Swiss prosecutors announce criminal proceedings into FIFA's awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Russia's Foreign Ministry lashes out at the U.S.

over the proceedings, calling it "another case of illegal extraterritorial implementation of American law." Major sponsors such as Coca-Cola, Visa and Adidas are urged to push FIFA to clean up its act. Adidas, FIFA's oldest partner, says it is "fully committed to creating a culture that promotes the highest standards of ethics and compliance, and we expect the same from our partners." UEFA, the European soccer body, calls on FIFA to postpone its presidential vote Friday, saying the corruption investigation tarnishes "the image of football as a whole." Sepp Blatter, 79, favoured to be elected to a fifth four-year term as FIFA president, says: "We will continue to work with the relevant authorities and we will work vigorously within FIFA in order to root out any misconduct, to regain your trust and ensure that football worldwide is free from wrongdoing." Postmedia News wire services that FIFA officials have taken bribes is akin to discovering that soccer balls are, in fact, round. But the possibility that further U.S. investigation and the now parallel probes in Europe could expand beyond alleged malfeasance in the Americas and into FIFA at large, and the office of cartoonishly villainous president Sepp Blatter, raises the prospect that one of sport's most embarrassing, scandalous enterprises is about to undergo a richly deserved reckoning. That the unravelling of FIFA's artifice might have begun with the awarding of the Qatar World Cup, the most foul of the soccer body's many misdeeds, makes the potential comeuppance all that sweeter.

For generations now, there has always been two FIFAs: the one that is widely understood to be shot through with fraud, but largely tolerated by corporate sponsors and partners and fans because ultimately it controls the keys to soccer's greatest events. And then there is the FIFA that presents itself to the world, so blissfully arrogant and dismissive of criticism that it routinely makes statements that are blatantly untrue while insisting that they are true. See, for example: Qatar will not be too hot in the summer. Consider the response on Wednesday to the searing US. Nicolas Leoz 1 i.

1 SCOTT STINSON David Triesman, former chief of England's 2018 World Cup bid, told a story a few years back that captured FIFA in a microcosm. Testifying before a parliamentary committee, Triesman described how FIFA officials bluntly requested million-dollar payments in exchange for their votes. And then he told the story of former FIFA executive Nicolas Leoz. Leoz, according to Triesman, confided that he already had plenty of money. He wanted a knighthood: Sir Nicolas Leoz.

The English official, bewildered, said that could not be arranged. It was the end of their discussion. England lost the vote. And that is how FIFA rolls: a system so perfectly designed to funnel money to the small number of men on its executive committees that one of them didn't even need to ask for cash any longer. FIFA's history of bribery had surpassed peak money.

Leoz was one of 14 FIFA-con-nected men arrested in Zurich on Wednesday on behalf of U.S. authorities charging them with racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering and other offences. The indictment, while limited in scope to allegations of wrongdoing related mostly to CONCA-CAF, the governing body covering North and Central America, has already sparked criminal investigations in Europe into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids won by Russia and Qatar, respectively. The news is at once not a surprise at all, since the revelation.