The DOJ's May 2015 dawn raid on a Zurich hotel resulted in 14 FIFA executives being indicted on charges including racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering spanning two decades.
Where this was said
At 34:47 · chapter starts 33:40
The culmination of the DOJ investigation came on a May morning in 2015. Joshua Robinson was at the Baur au Lac — the five-star Zurich lakeside hotel that had long been FIFA's unofficial headquarters and where he had watched executives return from Bahnhofstrasse shopping sprees — when Swiss police, empowered by the FBI and DOJ, arrived to carry out arrests. As FIFA executives were walked out of the hotel, Loretta Lynch read out a 47-count indictment: racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracies spanning two decades. Fourteen people were indicted that day. The RICO statute — originally designed for the Mafia — had been turned on global sport's governing body. For Jonathan Clegg, it was 'a decade of vindication delivered upon them.' The FIFA head of communications was so resigned to the inevitable that he was already cracking jokes: the president, the secretary general, and the head of comms are in a car — who's driving? The police.
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.
The DOJ's indictment against FIFA officials contained 47 counts covering racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracies spanning approximately twenty years.
Sepp Blatter was elected FIFA president five times before finally stepping down in the wake of the 2015 corruption scandal and indictments.
After stepping down, Sepp Blatter met Joshua Robinson for a two-hour French-language interview in a hotel above Zurich. He was unbelievably charming and not remotely contrite — insisting the DOJ investigation was a U.S. conspiracy over losing the World Cup hosting bid.
Before Uber, Kalanick built a peer-to-peer file-sharing system and was sued for a quarter of a trillion dollars by 33 major media companies.
CIA operative Edwin Wilson, part of the illegal arms network used by Oliver North, was sentenced to 52 years for supplying Libya with 10,000 machine guns and 20 tons of C4.
US prosecutors sought a 186-year prison sentence for Kim Dotcom, largely because of his financial support for WikiLeaks.
Mario Tabraue, a central figure in Monsters of God linked to drug trafficking and murder, was sentenced to over 100 years in prison but served only 12 years.
Zelig Williams disappeared on October 3rd, 2024 after leaving his mother's home in Columbia, South Carolina and has not been seen since.
Dateline: Missing in America Season 5 features six new unsolved missing-persons mysteries, hoping a listener may hold a crucial clue.
At a high school party, Strickland broke one victim's nose, jaw, and knocked out teeth requiring multiple reconstructive surgeries, resulting in two felony GBI charges.
Joyce LePage's murder has remained unsolved for 55 years despite active investigation from the start.
Joyce's own letter revealed that Mark Wadley had once stayed at a mental institution for trying to strangle people — a detail investigators apparently never followed up on.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.