>https://www.theepochtimes.com/interview-with-fbis-gaeta-core-to-russiagate-among-53-transcripts-slated-for-release_2674522.html
Getting close to Roman Abromovich and the Chabad, aint we….
fifa…
The story of FIFA, the international soccer governing body, is also a story of bribery, international intrigue, a former spy who compiled a dossier on President Donald Trump and a guy who walked around with a parrot on his shoulder. All of this is real. And it's part of the new book "Red Card," which focuses on the 2015 case in which U.S. prosecutors went after FIFA and indicted 14 people. Ken Bensinger, the book's author, is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed. He joined Marketplace Weekend host Lizzie O'Leary to talk about the book and the FIFA scandal. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Lizzy O'Leary: I want to start with a story that sounds kind of benign but it's important. So we're going to go back to 2010 and there's this guy Chuck Blazer who is a very colorful figure in U.S. soccer. He decides to deposit a check in his Merrill Lynch account here in New York City. It sounds like such a super normal thing to do. What is happening? Why is it so important?
Ken Bensinger: Chuck Blazer was the highest-ranking American soccer official probably ever in world soccer. He was a soccer dad from suburban New York from Westchester County who climbed to the very highest heights of world soccer, was one of the 24 most powerful man on FIFA's executive committee, and little known to 99.9 percent of the soccer world, he was also incredibly corrupt. That check that he deposited was in fact a piece of bribe money that he received in exchange for his vote to give South Africa the 2010 World Cup. He'd done that years earlier, but the money had been coming to him in little drips and drabs over the years and that check he deposited into his account in Merrill Lynch rather than sending it to his secret offshore bank accounts in the Caribbean. And as a result, an IRS agent saw the account number, saw that it was an American bank and used that to start the first subpoena against Chuck Blazer, secret subpoena. And that subpoena opened up the case against Chuck Blazer and allowed the IRS to grab him and secretly corner and flip him in a building next to the Trump Tower in late 2011.
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/06/15/business/following-money-soccers-biggest-scandal