Round up the unusual suspects
When the IRS’ chief of criminal investigation this week uttered the phrase “World Cup of fraud,” for a moment I thought he meant criminal indictments were finally being issued for Wall Street bankers over the criminal practices that precipitated (and followed) the 2008 financial crisis. How naive.
“If you touch our shores with your corrupt enterprise, whether that is through meetings or through using our world class financial system, you will be held accountable for that corruption,” FBI Director James Comey said of the charges leveled this week against officials of FIFA, international soccer’s governing body.
Not being a big team sports guy myself – as the Monkees’ Davy Jones said, “It’s ’cause I’m short, I know.” – I had to Google FIFA. This explainer from Vox helps:
The BBC wonders what the U.S. is doing policing international sports, finding, “To prosecute cases that involve foreign nationals, US authorities need only prove a minor connection to the United States.” So, the U.S. Department of Justice finds the time and the authority to investigate an international sports organization that “falls into a netherworld of governance,” to indict and arrest its officials in foreign countries for paying bribes through U.S. banks, yet cannot seem to show the same courtesy to top bank officials in this country for bringing the world economy to its knees, for hurting two-thirds of American families and continuing to hurt states years later.
Just so we’re clear.
Again, the usual suspects are implicated:
CitiBank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, HSBC Holdings PLC and Bank of America Corp. are deeply involved in the bribes, kickbacks and laundering money schemes of some top FIFA officials and sports executives that have been indicted by the US law enforcement. According to a 164-page indictment released by the US Department of Justice, the banks participated in illegal payment schemes and wire transfers in the amount of millions of US dollars.
On Wednesday, US authorities charged nine officials of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and five sports executives, alleging they were part of a scheme in which more than $150m in bribes were paid in exchange for the commercial rights to football tournaments.
The scheme involves top global financial institutions such as JPMorgan and HSBC, both of which have recently paid billions of dollars in fines for illegal trading and manipulation of foreign exchange markets.
Yet it is the unusual suspects who got rounded up while Wall Street’s Ugartes wring their hands over FIFA’s “poor devils.”