FOOTBALL SCANDAL
Fifa corruption trial gets under way in New York
New York — It was the raid that changed the face of the world’s most popular sport. Swiss police swooped in on a five-star Zurich hotel at dawn, arresting seven soccer officials at the request of the US. Two-and-a-half years later, the only defendants detained in the US who continue to profess their innocence will go on trial. When US prosecutors unveiled a years’ long investigation on May 27 2015, the allegations were dumbfounding: a quarter of a century of endemic corruption in the heart of Fifa, soccer’s governing body. A total of 42 officials and marketing executives, and three companies were indicted in an exhaustive 236-page complaint detailing 92 separate crimes and 15 corruption schemes to the tune of $200m. It was the biggest corruption scandal in the history of soccer. "Two generations of soccer officials," then attorney-general Loretta Lynch said at the time, "used their positions of trust within their respective organisations to solicit bribes from sports marketers in ex...
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