Investigator 'fairly confident' of additional FIFA indictments
An investigator with the Internal Revenue Service who was instrumental in Wednesday's sweeping indictments against 14 FIFA officials said he is fairly confident that there will be another round of indictments in the future, according to a report from The New York Times.
“I’m fairly confident that we will have another round of indictments,” Richard Weber, the chief of the IRS' unit in charge of criminal investigations, told the Times on Friday.
“I don’t think there was ever a decision or a declaration that we would go after soccer,” he said. “We were going after corruption.”
According to Weber, the IRS' initial involvement in the case began with an unrelated tax investigation of former U.S. Soccer Federation executive vice president Chuck Blazer. Blazer left soccer in 2013 and has cooperated as a government informant since then, according to an NBC News report.
The IRS teamed up with the FBI to carry out the four-year investigation into bribery and corruption charges throughout soccer's world governing body.
Weber's comments came on the same day that FIFA re-elected president Sepp Blatter to a fifth term. Federal authorities maintained that the timing of Wednesday's indictments had nothing to do with Friday's FIFA elections.
• Sepp Blatter's best quotes from his election as FIFA president
The investigation involved 33 different countries and is considered one of the more intricate white-collar busts in criminal history.
Among the allegations are that organization officials received $110 million in bribes related to the 2016 Copa America tournament.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the charges point to "corruption that is rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States."
- Will Green
