Eaton’s aggressive manner even upset the equipoise back in Lyon, as Noble privately questioned if his former charge, no longer carrying gun and badge, was overstepping his bounds as a private citizen. “The problem with Chris’s approach is that he wants to investigate these cases like a law enforcement officer, but without the powers,” Noble says. “He wants a FIFA witness protection program, a FIFA jump team. But it’s just not possible.” Noble should have known better, for he was closer to Eaton than almost any other colleague. “Being a police officer is more than Chris’s job,” says Eaton’s current wife, Joyce. “It’s who he is.”
Eaton believed that traditional, long-term investigations would not defeat fixing, through trials that slogged through the courts. You had to attack the fixing syndicates like you were fighting terrorism. You had to untangle the vast web of financing that underpinned transnational fixing. Cops couldn’t cross borders. But he could. “He recognized a crime of global proportion that didn’t have the global attention that it required,” Noble says.
Eaton began to press an internal struggle. He wrote to Valcke, urging FIFA to “respond immediately to expanding allegations of criminal international match fixing. . . . It is my strong recommendation that we cannot continue to merely respond using our administrative tools only as these challenges to the integrity of the game emerge.”
Eaton contacted Michael Hershman, whom he knew from his days at Interpol. An expert in corporate governance, Hershman was the president and CEO of the Fairfax Group, a Virginia company that solves management disputes, provides digital forensics, and conducts counterterrorism operations. Hershman was more publicly identified with Transparency International, the Berlin-based watchdog nongovernmental organization that he cofounded in 1993. With Fairfax, Hershman had advised numerous companies, including GE and Siemens, on the mechanisms of monitoring internal malfeasance. On behalf of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), Fairfax had investigated soccer match-fixing cases in the Americas.
Over several months in 2011, Eaton and Hershman studied the ways that match-fixing had infected soccer. They discussed the proactive measures that FIFA might take to push back against the syndicate. They focused on the players, ultimately devising a plan in three parts. A whistle-blower hotline was the cornerstone of their scheme. Players, coaches, and refs possessed constantly evolving intelligence about fixing. The hotline would give them a chance to report it. The hotline would be operational twenty-four hours a day, outsourced to a specialized provider, available through email or phone, in more than 180 languages. Callers could report anonymously.
If the caller chose to reveal his identity, the next component of the program took effect. Eaton and Hershman believed it was essential to provide amnesty to players, refs, and administrators who may be involved, but who wanted to report what they knew. This was a onetime offer to escape censure from FIFA. The third plank of the program was rehabilitation, a counseling program that FIFA would offer to players who provided substantial information about fixing. In cases where the player reporting information was not involved in fixing, FIFA was even prepared to provide financial reward. A new body would oversee all of this, FIFA’s Betting Integrity Investigations Task Force. On numerous occasions in the field, Eaton and his operatives had heard sources balk at providing information, citing FIFA’s own reputation for internal corruption. The reforms, Hershman and Eaton hoped, would begin to spread a new message.
While Eaton drafted this reform program, he received unsettling news at home. His wife, Joyce, an Interpol employee, was bedridden. Twenty years Eaton’s junior, Joyce was pregnant, and she was experiencing a series of complications. For months, the life of the fetus was in danger. Eaton worked on his reforms in Zurich during the week, traveling to Lyon only on the weekends to support his wife. Just four months into the pregnancy, French doctors discussed inducing labor. Death had only recently touched his family once again, Eaton’s parents passing away in the last year. Now Eaton worried that this new life might not have a chance.
CHAPTER 27
On June 16, 2011, Eaton wrote an email to Wilson Perumal’s Finnish attorney. He offered Perumal a chance to reform. Eaton wanted to enlist Perumal to speak to players, educating them about how to avoid being compromised by fixers. This was another component of his anti-fixing measures. Several days later, Perumal, restricted in jail to paper and pencil, wrote a handwritten response. He opened the letter by apologizing for the “late reply,” sounding like the most mild-mannered person in the world. “I would like to thank you for considering me as a candidate to work with FIFA to help young players to stay away from corruption,” he wrote. “After the completion of my trial I will be in better circumstances to comply with your request.”
The letters carried the tone of a budding correspondence. Eaton was encouraged. While he pursued his investigations into international match-fixing, he thought of developing Perumal as a confidential informant. He knew from experience that there were few things as valuable, though also few things that were harder to rely on. On July 19, a Finnish court convicted Perumal of business fraud, sentencing him to two years in prison. He would serve only one.
On an August morning in 2011, Eaton was finishing a breakfast of bacon and eggs in the café of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, in Bogotá. In an effort to rehabilitate its international image after decades of domination by criminal drug lords, Colombia was hosting the FIFA U-20 World Cup. Few cities usually bid to host this event, as it required plenty of logistical effort, without much stimulus to the local economy. But the tournament was enough of a priority for FIFA that Sepp Blatter had made the trip from Zurich. Eaton had never met his ultimate boss. But there he was, Blatter, sitting at a neighboring table. Eaton introduced himself. The two men retired to a side room in the café for a private conversation.
When he was away from his handlers, which was seldom, and in an intimate setting, Blatter turned down the lights of the politician and became an interested conversation partner. Eaton was struck by his appeal. He could see that Blatter, with his suave charm, was the embodiment of FIFA’s corporate culture, or what it aimed to be. Blatter listened intently as Eaton briefed him on the state of match-fixing in the game. “It’s more serious than most people appreciate,” Eaton said. “It needs to be strongly and quickly dealt with.” Then he filled him in on the reforms that he had devised. Blatter offered Eaton all the support he required.
Eaton, the operator, was so focused on communicating the weight of match-fixing that he didn’t realize that he had entered the political realm. That was where genuine concerns came to idle. What could Blatter do, in the end? Outsiders identified him as the face of the organization, but the organization was bigger than he was. Blatter looked tired. He was overwhelmed. The FIFA executive committee would soon appoint an independent governance committee to investigate evidence of internal corruption. Who knew what the committee would discover?
Blatter sat back in his chair. He sighed deeply. He assumed a look of reflection. And he spoke of João Havelange, the Brazilian soccer administrator who had preceded him in the post of FIFA president. Havelange had presided over FIFA for nearly a quarter century, from the mid-1970s, when the international game was unpolished and unpredictable, until the late 1990s, when corporate interests began to figure out how to streamline the business of soccer, turning the sport into a generator of massive profit. Havelange left the FIFA presidency in 1998, before soccer had become a global gold mine. But he could see it coming. And he understood how this great wealth would activate the thugs and connivers who had always had a hand in the game. Havelange knew that while soccer benefited from its mass global popularity, the game was ultimately ungovernable.
Blatter looked at Eaton. “When I signed the first billion-dollar TV contract, Havelange told me I was making a mistake,” he said. “ ‘You’re opening things up to predators.’ ”
&
nbsp; Blatter’s secretary walked into the café. It was time to head to the stadium. Blatter sat where he was, motionless, as though he hadn’t heard. “I’m not a happy president,” he said.
CHAPTER 28
FIFA HEADQUARTERS, ZURICH, JANUARY 2012
On January 10, 2012, Chris Eaton addressed a select group of reporters in a conference room at FIFA’s Zurich headquarters. The time had come to announce the reform program that he and Hershman had developed. Sitting at the head table, Eaton read from prepared remarks: “By now, it should be absolutely clear to even the most optimistic that we are dealing with globally roaming organized crime, and that it is undermining many international sports at all levels. It is unquestionably rapacious and opportunistic.”
As proof of his claims, Eaton displayed several slides on the screen behind him. These were copies of emails and letters that Perumal had sent to soccer federation officials. Eaton delineated what he called “long-term institutional answers”:
Strong match and competition regulations
A clear understanding of who, in the matrix of sporting organizations, is responsible and accountable
A rigid compliance to due-diligence and sound business practices in all financial arrangements
Fit and proper persons tests, especially for match and player agents
Diligent monitoring and oversight of matches and the administration of them
A strong investigative capability when prevention protections do not work
Eaton closed his remarks by introducing the tenets and substance of the new program. The initiative would go into effect on February 1, 2012, beginning with the hanging of posters in stadium locker rooms around the world. This wasn’t a solution to match-fixing. But it was the first practical step that FIFA had ever taken toward fighting it. Eaton had managed a rare feat. Since he didn’t fit the FIFA culture, he was beginning to change it to fit him. He had achieved something else of surprise. While FIFA’s reputation suffered from continual allegations of internal corruption, with his reforms Eaton had managed to make FIFA look like the paragon of moral integrity, if only for one day in the news cycle. With the newly appointed Independent Governance Committee casting a shadow over the organization, this press conference shone rare brightness on FIFA. Eaton had turned a negative issue into positive publicity. FIFA had finally begun to take proactive measures to combat the manipulation of its matches.
The day following the press conference, January 11, Eaton’s internal office phone rang. Marco Villiger was calling.
After the two exchanged pleasantries, Villiger’s tone deepened. “Chris, I have some bad news,” he said. “Blatter and Valcke have decided to suspend your reforms.” Eaton couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They had just held the press conference. There were articles in that day’s newspapers announcing the reforms. The whistle-blower hotline was set to go live in a couple of days. “We’re forming the Independent Governance Committee,” Villiger continued, “and this is one of the areas that they’re going to refer to the committee for consideration. This is just how we have to proceed.”
“You know I’m disappointed,” Eaton replied. “You know how much work has gone into this. I understand the decision. But it doesn’t stop me from being disappointed. Because these reforms are important.”
Eaton searched for justifiable motivation in the decision of his bosses. Michael Hershman, who would go on to sit on the Independent Governance Committee, couldn’t see any. “In my judgment, there was no good reason for FIFA not to have implemented a program at that time,” he says. Ultimately, Eaton understood that FIFA’s increasing preoccupation with its internal troubles would weaken his match-fixing mandate. Had he overreached from the beginning?
Eaton had relearned an old lesson, that even though he might be right, politics would always dictate meaningful decisions. On the range, the lawman applied the power of the state in the way that he believed suited the environment. In society, Eaton knew that he was ultimately beholden to an organization that by its mercantile nature advanced priorities that he did not share. It didn’t matter what was right. It mattered what was expedient. However much he had enjoyed the moment of his innovative successes, the moment was now over. When faced with a choice, FIFA had chosen predictably. “My concern was that outward corruption was far more endemic and far more damaging to football than internal corruption,” Eaton says. “External corruption is far more dangerous to football than what happens to FIFA. Football is bigger than FIFA.”
Later that day, January 11, shortly after his phone call with Villiger, Eaton drafted a letter. Addressed to Jerome Valcke, it read, in part: “Please accept this memo as notice of my resignation under the terms of my employment contract.”
Eaton stayed on at FIFA for two months, handing over active investigations to his successor. The next FIFA security chief was a longtime cop named Ralf Mutschke, a German who had also been an Interpol director. Ron Noble arranged his appointment at FIFA, as he had done for Eaton. The similarities ended there. A buttoned-up company man, Mutschke focused on security rather than match-fixing. Unlike Eaton, Mutschke was an enthusiastic fan of soccer. Also unlike Eaton, Mutschke, a German, had exhibited no tendency of outdistancing his mandate.
As his days at FIFA dwindled, Eaton’s thoughts began to wander. Joyce delivered a healthy baby two weeks after his resignation. The boy was named Roy, after Eaton’s father. At sixty years old, Eaton was a father for the sixth time. He began to think that maybe this was the direction he should pursue, fatherhood and retirement at once, an active stasis.
He continued touring the conference circuit, dutifully sounding the horn for the fight against match-fixing, underscoring the financial scope and global nature of the problem. The influential figures of the soccer world, the grandiloquent and political, gave Eaton the cold shoulder. They looked on this Australian cowboy in their midst, this outsider, then laughed privately with one another. Eaton’s hope in the possibilities of the FIFA job had been dashed, and he was slipping into irrelevance.
Eaton didn’t have the powers of a cop, nor the authority of representing FIFA. What he had gained was his own independent stature. If FIFA’s internal review, the battle for its corporate image, had prevented it from battling match-fixing to its full capability, then who was looking after the integrity of the game? UEFA? England’s Football Association? The standard-bearers for the game had largely avoided the issue. National governments and police were focusing on domestic prosecutions. There was no one in a position of authority and influence who vigorously fought to understand the international nature of the fixing syndicates, and how to upend them.
Chris Eaton didn’t even like soccer. And this may have been the difference. His emotions and finances and identity weren’t entwined with the game’s fortunes. He had no stake in the game. He had a stake in the law. While others had spent lifetimes in the game, and were thus prone to making allowances for its shortcomings, as though for an impolite relative, Eaton couldn’t. In just two years’ time, Eaton had become soccer’s moral authority.
When Eaton and his corps of operatives mapped the Singapore fixing syndicate, he learned that this was only the veneer of fixing, its public face, fixing’s marketing department. The power and impetus behind fixing was the manipulation of the sportsbooks, both legal and illegal, all over the world, though primarily in Asia, as Chinese organized crime overwhelmed Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, and anywhere they could push out the competition.
“I could see that this was no longer about sport,” Eaton says. “This was about organized crime. Sport happened to be the vehicle. I saw for the first time a whole new moneymaking opportunity for transnational organized crime.” He saw the unique advantage that fixing presented established criminal enterprises. When they moved drugs or prostitutes, for example, they often did so over international borders, risking detection. Fixing presented almost no ris
k. It was digital money, and almost entirely untraceable. “This was going to be the most dangerous income stream for organized crime in modern history,” Eaton says. “This would have cashed up organized crime in a way that nothing ever had before. Also, terrorism has always copied organized crime, often copying the way they make their money. How long before they would say, ‘match-fixing isn’t a bad deal’?”
In March 2012, as his time at FIFA came to a close, Eaton traveled to Doha, Qatar, where initial planning was under way for the 2022 World Cup. The soccer world was just getting to know the first Middle Eastern World Cup host. Various elements in Qatari society were eager to emit all the right signals. Mohammed Hanzab, a former lieutenant colonel in the Qatari army, had recently established an organization called the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS). Hanzab had created the ICSS as a nongovernmental, nonprofit foundation to provide expertise in the security of major sporting events. He hired a longtime German police officer, Helmut Spahn, to run the organization.
The Big Fix Page 14