The FIFA World Cup’s Backstage

June 19, 2018 Opinion , OPINION/NEWS , OTHER , Sport

Reuters photo

By

Ricardo Swire

The mystique that shadows FIFA’s international football matches, players and stadiums emanates from well organized criminal syndicates, suspicious World Cup arrangements starting with FIFA’s tournament venue assignments. The 2018 World Cup in Russia has been beleaguered by reports of aggressive political gerrymandering, the powerful FIFA and Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) icon supposedly receiving a Picasso painting, taken from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg’s collection, as payola.

Moscow is accused of paying bribes to FIFA, through both government and private individuals, for the selection as host country. The FIFA World Cup 2018’s first game was played on Thursday June 14th in which the host defeated Saudi Arabia 5-0, the first of 64 official games in eight groups scheduled for venues across Russia. Previous World Cup tournaments were stained by organised crime syndicates combined with soccer mafias that secretly control television broadcasting rights. In May 2015 the stench of FIFA’s, Confederation of Central American and Caribbean Football’s (CONCACAF) sewers was uncovered in a New York trial.

Between 2011 and 2014 FIFA generated US$10 billion in broadcasting fees from international football competitions. During the three years popular British and Spanish national federation leagues made hundreds of millions of dollars from broadcasting rights. The 2015 criminal case, prosecuted in an American court against FIFA officials, displayed the soccer mafias’ sophistication. FIFA generated US$2.5 billion worth of sales and broadcasting rights in America alone. The court document stated “broadcasting rights in exchange for bribes has been one of the main sources of corruption and bribery in the soccer world.”

FIFA maintained its position that revocation of host venue designation is irreversible. The World Cup 2022 award to Qatar additionally demonstrated the football governing body’s mysterious venue selection process. FIFA’s formal internal investigation report presented by American/Latino Judge Michael J. Garcia about process was suppressed, a whitewashed summary, by the author’s own contest, presented to the public instead. In May 2017 the New York based Judge became one of four candidates, shortlisted from twelve, interviewed by the US Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General to head the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

Patterns show a FIFA World Cup cloaked history that include snares of drug trafficking. The July 1994 murder of Andres Escobar, or Colombia’s ex-national team defender, connected by internal security intelligence officials to a syndicate of drug trafficking gamblers. The Colombian defender scored an “own goal” that caused his team’s elimination that year, during the World Cup hosted in America. In 2013 the US Treasury Department included Envigado Football Club, Oficina de Envigado and Medellin Cartel aka drug trafficking mafias to its Kingpin List.

Transnational drug cartel connections to FIFA World Cup further emphasized in a Salvadorian internal security scenario that encompassed the Texis Cartel. El Salvador’s drugs kingpin “Chepe Diablo” was the president of Federacion Salvadorena de Futbol (FESFUT) or Salvadorian Football Federation. The FIFA subsidiary’s top Salvadorian executive currently defends money laundering charges at home. He also occupies a prominent place on the US Treasury Department’s foreign narcotics “Kingpin List.”

In Mexico FIFA is connected to sports mafias via “Rodolfo Davila Cordova.” The profiling “sports agent” is actually the organized criminal organization Juarez Cartel’s financial operator. He officially managed transfers for professional Latin American football players desirous of joining eminent European teams. The “Cachiros,” or Honduras’ most powerful and feared drug trafficking organization, with two convicted members in American jails, is linked to “Real Sociedad de Tocoa football club in Colon department of Honduras.