Where this was said
Chuck Blazer: The Unlikely Informant Who Brought Down FIFA
At 32:55 · chapter starts 30:08
If Chuck Blazer sounds like a fiction, the reporters insist he was very real. A man of extraordinary taste, he looked like Santa Claus, kept two apartments in Trump Tower — one for himself, one for his cats — and walked Manhattan with a parrot on his shoulder that he fed chicken. He had another problem: he owed approximately $10 million to the IRS. Rather than prosecute him, the DOJ made the classic prosecutorial move — they flipped him, turning Blazer into an informant to access the larger, more difficult question of FIFA's systemic corruption. What they gave him was a recording device hidden inside his keychain. At every subsequent FIFA meeting, Blazer would toss his keys on the table as he arrived, exactly as anyone else might put down a phone — and record everything. The recordings were, as Robinson puts it, quite damning: candid discussions of sweetheart deals, named officials receiving payments, the full network of FIFA corruption laid bare by people who behaved with mind-blowing impunity.
Chuck Blazer was the U.S. soccer representative to FIFA — a Santa Claus lookalike who kept two apartments in Trump Tower (one for his cats), walked Manhattan with a parrot on his shoulder, and owed $10 million to the IRS. The DOJ flipped him instead of prosecuting him.
Chuck Blazer, the U.S. FIFA representative turned DOJ informant, kept two apartments in Trump Tower — one for himself and one specifically for his cats.
Chuck Blazer, the U.S. soccer representative to FIFA, owed approximately $10 million to the IRS, which gave the DOJ leverage to flip him as an informant against FIFA.
Chuck Blazer walked into FIFA executive meetings and tossed his keys on the table — just like everyone else. Except his keychain was a secret FBI recording device. The recordings captured explicit discussions of sweetheart broadcast deals and named the officials receiving corrupt payments.
Joshua Robinson was at the Zurich hotel with his $8 coffee when Swiss police — empowered by the FBI and DOJ — walked FIFA executives out in handcuffs. The 47-count RICO indictment against 14 officials was the law originally designed for the mob being turned on global soccer.
