Argentina, too, had received provisional warrants, but so far nobody had been arrested, meaning there were at least three defendants unaccounted for—Burzaco and the two Jinkises. Randall, finished serving the warrant in Miami, flew back to New York and began preparing so-called red notices to submit to Interpol, which would alert every country in the world to detain the remaining defendants if they attempted to cross their borders.
Next came the extradition requests. There were seven men sitting in jail in Zurich, plus Warner in Trinidad, and Leoz in Paraguay, and the United States had to formally request extradition for each.
There was, in other words, a tremendous amount of work still to be done. As night approached, people on the case began trickling out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn and heading home. A few had managed to catch some sleep in the hours between the midnight takedown and the press conference, but everyone was exhausted.
Norris, still fuming about the leak, eventually left as well. He didn’t say a word about Peter Luger, the steakhouse where he’d been planning to take Randall and Berryman to celebrate.
TWENTY-EIGHT
* * *
“A GREAT DAY FOR FOOTBALL”
THIRTEEN HOURS BEFORE THE TAKEDOWN, Zorana Danis walked into a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, flanked by her lawyers. With so much happening that day, the prosecution could spare just a single assistant U.S. attorney, Sam Nitze, who had joined the case about a year earlier, to witness Danis’s moment of truth.
Charming and personable, the owner of International Soccer Marketing had grown popular with the investigators since she flipped in late 2013. She had helped them understand some of the complexities of South American soccer, and had been instrumental in building the case against Nicolás Leoz.
Danis was being allowed to plead to just two counts, neither of them involving racketeering. One was wire fraud conspiracy, for some of the bribes she paid in exchange for Copa Libertadores sponsorship rights, and the other was for making a false statement on her tax returns, because she had tried to write off a $1.25 million bribe as a deductible expense.
“I knew that my conduct in paying these bribes and kickbacks was wrong,” Danis, who also agreed to forfeit $2 million, told the judge. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
The following morning, when the big indictment was unsealed in Brooklyn, so, too, were the charging documents against Blazer, Hawilla, and the two Warner brothers. But Danis’s was not.
In fact, the prosecutors had made absolutely sure that not a single word about her was uttered to anyone at all.
* * *
In RICO cases, prosecutors rarely consider the investigation to be finished when the indictment is handed down. In fact, that’s often just the beginning. Long before they ever face the grand jury, prosecutors are planning a second charging document, called a superseding indictment, that expands the number of defendants. The first indictment itself can be a critical tool in getting there.
In writing that document, Norris made sure to describe each criminal conspiracy in detail, identifying the role played by every defendant, while liberally salting in clues about bank accounts, shell companies, and other potential evidence. He also filled the indictment with mentions of unnamed co-conspirators, twenty-five in all, leaving strong hints about who each was.
Co-conspirator #10, for example, was described as “a high-ranking official of FIFA, CONMEBOL and the Asociación del Fútbol Argentino,” which identified him as Julio Grondona. Co-conspirator #7 was clearly Mohamed bin Hammam, mentioned as “a high-ranking official at FIFA and AFC, the regional confederation representing much of Asia” who ran for the FIFA presidency in 2011.
Co-conspirator #5 was “the controlling principal” of a Jersey City company that controlled “sponsorship and title sponsorship rights associated with the Copa Libertadores” and who paid “bribes and kickbacks to the defendant Nicolás Leoz” and others to keep those rights. The only person who could possibly fit that description was Zorana Danis.
When the indictment was unsealed, Norris knew that it would spread like wildfire among crooked soccer officials the world over. They would scrutinize every line, trying to decipher how the case developed, where it was going, and whether they might also be under investigation.
The description of Co-conspirator #5 would identify Zorana Danis to those who knew her. Norris had done that quite deliberately. And by keeping her guilty plea a secret, the prosecution was signaling that she must be a target as well.
Someone would almost certainly call Danis to discuss bribes, to ask her what she knew, or to tell her to keep her mouth shut, never suspecting that she was cooperating with the feds and would be recording all her calls.
That was the beauty of a richly detailed speaking indictment: as soon as it drops, phones start ringing off the hook.
* * *
The morning after the arrests, CONCACAF convened an emergency meeting in Zurich to install a new president. Alfredo Hawit of Honduras was the confederation’s most senior vice president and thus by statute automatically assumed the post, just as—ironically—Lisle Austin had unsuccessfully tried to do exactly four years earlier.
Samir Gandhi, the Sidley Austin attorney, had flown into town overnight from New York, and the scene he witnessed at the Renaissance hotel resembled a funeral home. The Caribbean delegates, in particular, were stunned. Some were openly weeping, while others furiously protested it was a big conspiracy. Nobody could believe that Jeffrey Webb, the great reformer, the Caribbean hope, had in fact been a crook.
Amid all the gnashing of teeth, Gandhi presented an action plan. The confederation needed to immediately launch an internal investigation, both to figure out how much Webb had stolen, and to determine how large its criminal exposure might be. “Will you retain us?” he asked the delegates. For the second time in three years, CONCACAF was investigating itself for corruption.
The following day, May 29, Sepp Blatter stood for reelection, ignoring growing legions of angry protesters gathering outside Zurich’s Hallenstadion, where the vote would be held. Taking the podium before the association’s 209 members, he derisively cast aside arguments that seventeen years atop FIFA was, finally, enough.
“What is this notion of time? Time is infinite and we slice it up. I find the time I’ve spent at FIFA is very short and it will remain short,” Blatter defiantly said. “I would quite simply just like to stay with you.”
The feeling appeared mutual. Just two days after the world learned there was a huge and ongoing criminal investigation that blatantly compared the organization over which he presided to the mafia, Blatter was elected to a fifth term. He easily outdistanced Prince Ali, 133 votes to 73, in the first round of voting, leading his rival to withdraw.
The following day, Blatter told a radio reporter that the arrests had been carefully planned to undermine his mandate. “With all the respect to the judicial system of the U.S.,” he said, “if they have a financial crime that regards American citizens then they must arrest these people there and not in Zurich when we have a congress.”
On Sunday, Jack Warner, out of jail on bond, released two videotaped interviews he’d conducted, dressed in the lime green colors of his political party. He, too, accused the United States of conspiring against soccer, claiming that “no one gives them the right to do what they are doing.”
As proof of the plot, Warner held up a printout of a news article from an American publication: “FIFA Frantically Announces 2015 Summer World Cup in United States,” the headline read.
“If FIFA is so bad, why is it the U.S. wants to keep the World Cup?” Warner asked, an incredulous look on his face. “Take your losses, like a man, and go.” But Warner’s allegations soon turned him into a punch line when it was revealed that the article he cited had come from The Onion, a satirical publication.
Then on Monday, came another leak. The New York Times, once again quoting unnamed sources close to the American criminal investigation, reported that Jérôme Valc
ke, Blatter’s general secretary, had personally approved transfer of the $10 million bribe paid to Jack Warner by South Africa as part of its scheme to win the 2010 World Cup.
The next day, June 2, FIFA summoned reporters to its hilltop headquarters for an unscheduled press conference. Given short notice, only a few dozen journalists arrived in time to watch Blatter, in a blue suit and striped tie, take the podium.
“FIFA needs a profound overhaul,” Blatter said, speaking in French. “While I have a mandate from the membership of FIFA, I do not feel that I have a mandate from the entire world of football—the fans, the players, the clubs, the people who live, breathe and love football as much as we all do at FIFA. Therefore, I have decided to lay down my mandate at an extraordinary elective Congress. I will continue to exercise my functions as FIFA President until that election.”
It was extraordinary; something soccer fans could not have imagined only a week earlier. Sepp Blatter, just reelected as overlord of world soccer three days earlier, was going to resign. “A Great Day for Football” read the headline in the British tabloid the Daily Mirror. “Blatt’s All Folks,” crowed the Daily Express.
* * *
By a somewhat stark coincidence, United Passions, a $27 million film ordered up by Blatter and almost entirely paid for by FIFA, had its American premiere just three days after the Swiss soccer boss announced his resignation.
Only two people showed up at the Laemmle theater in Los Angeles’s North Hollywood neighborhood for the first screening on the afternoon of June 5. One, an older Mexican immigrant, said he was there because he liked the World Cup. The other, after watching the film, said it was “very strange” and it seemed to him to be less than honest in its portrayal of history.
The film, starring Tim Roth as Blatter, presented itself as a biopic with FIFA as the main character. But in truth, it was a story about how seemingly everyone within FIFA, for over a century, was irredeemably tainted, bigoted, corrupt, or incompetent—except for Blatter, who emerges from the film as a kind of hardworking, earnest saint, dedicated only to the sport, and to the millions of impoverished children who play it around the globe.
João Havelange, his predecessor, is depicted as a cold-hearted, vote-buying schemer, who shocks Blatter by telling him to keep a black book on his rivals to use against him, while the English, whose press corps tormented Blatter throughout his presidency, are portrayed as racist, sexist, self-important buffoons. Tellingly, the only character in the film other than Blatter who escapes such rough treatment is Horst Dassler, the intellectual father of the sports marketing industry that was now at the heart of FIFA’s worst ever crisis.
By the time it was screened for a final time, on June 11, the film’s entire U.S. box office amounted to $918. United Passions, a film conceived to lionize Sepp Blatter had earned the distinction of being the lowest-grossing commercial release in American history.
* * *
Late on the morning of June 9, Alejandro Burzaco, accompanied by a lawyer, walked out of the upscale Hotel Greif in the medieval mountainside town of Bolzano in northern Italy. Dressed in a blue oxford shirt and jeans, he crossed the town’s market square, passed its distinctive eight-hundred-year-old Romanesque cathedral, and finally reached the police station, where he surrendered.
He’d been keeping a low profile since arriving in Milan on May 27, moving around Italy in the company of an Argentine lawyer who was a close friend and had cut short a vacation to meet him. To avoid being tracked, the two men shared hotel rooms booked under the attorney’s name, and soon moved to a nondescript condo near the beach on Italy’s west coast.
Burzaco retained a New York defense attorney, who flew to Italy twice to discuss his situation. Burzaco had dual Italian-Argentine citizenship, and thus could stay in Italy, try to lie low, and take his chances that if he were ever picked up, he might not be extradited. He could try to return to Argentina, but ran the risk of getting arrested at the airport. Or he could call up the prosecutors in Brooklyn and offer up his cooperation in hopes of leniency.
Burzaco was from a prominent family in Argentina. His brother had been a congressman and chief of the Buenos Aires police and was closely linked to the front-runner to be the country’s next president. Most of his assets had been frozen at the request of the U.S. government in coordination with the raids, and on the same day, his employees in Buenos Aires had destroyed countless sensitive company documents, as well as a secret computer server in Uruguay where years’ worth of bribes had been painstakingly accounted for.
After some thought, Burzaco elected to waive extradition and try his luck with the Department of Justice. He chose to surrender in Bolzano because it was out of the way, and hoped it would draw little attention. But the publicity-starved local police decided to hold a press conference, and reporters soon swarmed the city’s small jail.
Two days later, Burzaco received a call from his brother telling him that he was in danger. An order had apparently been given within the Buenos Aires provincial police ranks to prevent him from speaking to the U.S. prosecutors at any cost, even if it meant killing him.
Burzaco was still in Italy, now under house arrest at a bed-and-breakfast outside Bolzano as he anxiously waited for the extradition formalities to conclude. His family and some friends came to visit him during that time, and he become convinced he was making the right decision.
Finally, on July 29, Burzaco flew from Italy to Kennedy airport in New York, where Jared Randall met him at the gate and put him under arrest. He would start meeting with prosecutors the next day, but it so happened that his favorite team, River Plate, was playing in the first leg of the Copa Libertadores final that evening. Randall, who had to watch over him until he made bond, tracked down a portable radio so he could listen to the match.
Burzaco was arraigned two days later, with his sister, mother, brother, ex-wife, and several friends watching from the gallery.
According to a 2009 study of criminal courts around the country, the average bail for all types of felonies was $55,400, with murder, the most serious crime, tipping the scale at just over $1 million. The fifty-one-year-old chief executive of Torneos y Competencias was not accused of any violent crimes, much less murder. The charges he faced were wire fraud, money laundering, and racketeering. But he was no typical defendant, and this was no typical case.
Burzaco’s bond would be $20 million, secured by $3.3 million in cash, three pieces of real estate, and his stake in Torneos, which the prosecutors estimated was worth at least $15 million. He’d be placed under house arrest in New York, unable to go outside without permission from the FBI, and would have to pay for round-the-clock private security, as well as GPS monitoring.
The investigation had reeled in another cooperator, as important in some ways as Hawilla or Blazer. Burzaco told prosecutors he had paid more than $150 million in bribes to dozens of soccer officials over the course of many years. He was highly intelligent, knowledgeable, loved soccer, and spoke flawless English. Almost four months later, Burzaco won his cooperation agreement, too, consenting to plead guilty to three felony counts and to forfeit the tidy sum of $21,694,408.49.
* * *
On July 26, Mexico handily defeated Jamaica, 3–1, before 69,000 fans at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia to win its tenth Gold Cup title. Immediately afterward, CONCACAF’s new Honduran president, Alfredo Hawit, stood at midfield and handed the oversized trophy to Mexican midfielder Andrés Guardado, who had scored the match’s first goal with a spectacular volley.
That same day, Hawit met privately with Fabio Tordin, a consultant based in Miami, to discuss sports marketing firm Full Play’s failed attempt, more than three years earlier, to win rights to the Gold Cup and other CONCACAF tournaments. Tordin had played middleman in the scheme, first putting Hugo and Mariano Jinkis in touch with Hawit and the two other Central Americans, and then helping coordinate the bribe payments.
Now that the American criminal investigation was public and the Jinkises had be
en indicted, Tordin told Hawit, he worried that the bribes would come to light. Hawit alone had received $250,000, and Tordin was terrified. The confederation president responded calmly. There was no cause for concern, he said, as he’d come up with a clever way to cover his tracks using a fake contract. Nobody would ever know.
Unfortunately for Hawit, Tordin was wearing a wire. Shortly after the indictment was unsealed, the prosecutors in Brooklyn had sent him what’s known as a target letter, advising him he was under investigation. So Tordin hired an attorney and in short order he was cooperating, too.
Hawit’s tenure as CONCACAF president would prove exceedingly short.
TWENTY-NINE
* * *
A ZEALOUS ADVOCATE
DAVID TORRES-SIEGRIST WAS DRIVING HOME in his minivan after singing in choir at midweek mass in Arcadia, California, when his assistant soccer coach called him on his cell phone.
“It’s my uncle,” the man said. “He’s been arrested and needs help. His name is Eugenio Figueredo.”
Torres-Siegrist had five children. In addition to his church commitments, he volunteered as the youth soccer team’s head coach, as an assistant scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts, and was involved in the PTA at his kids’ school. He was also an attorney who had handled a wide variety of civil litigation over the past dozen years, largely involving suing or defending small municipalities in contract disputes.
The name Figueredo didn’t ring a bell, but Torres-Siegrist figured the problem was something minor, maybe a DUI, and said he’d be glad to help. Great, his friend replied, how soon can you leave for Zurich?
Torres-Siegrist, who had curly brown hair, a short-cropped beard, and an informal manner, was born and raised in Southern California; he favored shorts and flip-flops and had never before felt the need to own a passport. The next morning he drove to a government passport agency in West Los Angeles and waited in line for hours to get one on an expedited basis.
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