Corruption Scores a Hat Trick Against FIFA FIFA has been at the center of a great deal of corruption during the last couple of years. There are endless topics to discuss on the matter of corruption and FIFA, but I wanted to focus on three of the biggest charges of corruption against FIFA, bribery, mistreatment of female athletes, and the use of slave labor to build stadiums to host their games. FIFA has been around for over a century and was a very respectable organization at one time, but that time is now over. This affects international business because there are currently 209 countries within FIFA. FIFA has a far reaching impact because soccer is the most popular sport in the world. To better understand why and how FIFA became so …show more content…

That all changed near the end of May 2015. It all came crashing down for FIFA on the morning of May 27, 2015. Swiss authorities arrested several top FIFA officials with charges that allege there had been widespread corruption throughout soccer’s governing body over the past twenty years, involving bids for World Cups and marketing and broadcast deals (Manfred, 2015). Two current FIFA vice presidents were among those arrested and indicted, Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands and Eugenio Figueredo of Uruguay. Fourteen people, nine soccer officials and five sports-marketing executives, were named in the indictment and face charges of wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering (Manfred, 2015). Later in the day on May 27th, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed all of the details and evidence used against the fourteen people indicted. The U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a news conference that bribery and corruption have been tainting the sport of soccer for at least twenty-four years as FIFA officials solicited bribes from sports marketing firms and others surrounding its marquee events (Manfred, 2015). U.S. authorities suspect FIFA officials have received or paid bribes totaling millions of dollars. The bribery suspects are alleged to have made payments to FIFA officials that total more than $150 million. The amount of money and people involved show how far reaching the