FBI TRUE

- The importance of soccer internationally is kind of incomprehensible.

- The World Cup Tournament is the single largest sporting event in the world.

Soccer is life.

- These individuals that are part of the FIFA organizations,

they are treated like royalty.

- In the beginning, the biggest piece was bribery

for World Cup votes.

- We looked at this case as an organized-crime case.

- You could look at the structure of FIFA,

almost like a traditional organized-crime family

with a boss, an underboss, capos, soldiers...

: A pattern of fraud, bribery and kickbacks

that netted international soccr officials and

marketing executives $150 million over the last 24 years.

- If anyone overseas caught wind that the FBI was investigating

FIFA, the case would have finished before it started.

- Who leaked it? What if, a Swiss law enforcement

officer gets killed?

- This really is the world cup of fraud.

And today we're issuing FIFA a red card.

: In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts, mob stings.

Terrorist takedowns.

We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

: Mark it. - Freeze!

FBI!

- FBI! : Action!

: But they don't know the half of it.

What really goes down?

We save that for each other,

when we're talking agent to agent.

This is FBI. True.

So, what is FIFA?

- FIFA is the organization that oversees world soccer.

: Mike Gaeta supervised the Eurasian organized-crime team

and headed the New York office's money laundering

investigations squad.

- Soccer is the largest sport in the world.

FIFA is the largest sport governing body in the world.

- Are they like the size of the United Nations?

- It's bigger than the United Nations.

: John Penza is a 21-year veteran of the FBI.

John served as both an investigator and a supervisor

for the Eurasian and Italian organized-crime squads,

focusing on high-level financial crimes.

- FIFA's made up of six confederations that are

groups of regions of countries all over the world.

It is the body that is controlling the World Cup

and all the various tournaments that are held internationally.

- You're an FBI squad in New York.

How does FIFA come across your desk?

: Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FB.

she worked gangs, crimes against children

as well as human and drug trafficking.

- So in 2009, I was assigned to be the supervisor of

the Russian organized-crime squad, and I was given

the mandate to look internationally

for transnational organized-crime, to look for sophisticated

criminal activity that affected the United States.

So I was asked to fly to London to meet some people who wanted

to talk to us and provide us information about international criminal activity.

One of the things this person talks about

is FIFA and corruption at FIFA.

The information that we were told was that for years,

people were being bribed to vote for World Cup locations.

Think about the Olympics.

It's bigger.

It's a huge, huge, huge event and a gigantic money-maker

for that country that gets that bid.

- There were also allegations of match fixing.

There were also allegations of bribery

for tickets for tournaments.

- Are certain countries mentioned?

People? What are they telling you?

So this was 2009.

: A shot at the goal.

And guess who's got it?

FIFA Club World Cup champions, Barcelona.

- One of the pieces of information we heard was

that Russia had been working to bribe

to obtain votes for the World Cup for 2018.

What we learned is that there was a group within FIFA

that was physically based in New York City.

And so if there was corruption and they were engaged,

then that corruption was happening here in New York City.

So it was really in our backyard.

- So you're overseas, you're getting this information.

You take that back to the United States.

Where do you begin? - I had significant experience

conducting organized-crime cases, RICO cases,

criminal enterprise matters.

We looked at it as a criminal enterprise case

and formulated it that way.

We had a target here in New York City named Chuck Blazer

who is one of the executives of CONCACAF, which was

one of the bodies that make up FIFA, the body that covers

North America and the Caribbean.

He was very influential in the business side of world soccer.

- If I look back 10 years, 20 years and see the progress

we've made, I'm very proud of our accomplishments.

- Chuck lived a very high life here in New York City.

He was out on the town.

Somewhat of a socialite.

- He had two apartments in Trump Tower.

He lived on one of the top floors.

Two?

Two. One for him, and one for his cats.

- When you were over in London, what other names

were they throwing at you and have you seen them now

in your investigation?

- One of the other names was Chuck's partner at CONCACAF,

Jack Warner, who actually was the president of CONCACAF.

Jack was from Trinidad and Tobago.

Part of the importance of their positions and them

in particular, was that they were actually voting members

on the executive committee of FIFA.

- What does the executive committee do that makes that so important?

- One of the more important things they do is vote

for where the World Cup is going to be held, incredibly big.

- That's huge. : Yeah.

And you've got heads of state meeting with

the executive committees of FIFA lobbying

to have the vote for them.

They want the World Cup in their country.

- These individuals that are part of the FIFA organization,

specifically the ExCo members, they are treated like royalty.

The way they traveled, first class everywhere,

the best restaurants.

Just unbelievable, the money and power these folks have.

: Looking for Fàbregas. No, it's Iniesta.

This is it! That's the goal!

Spain are the kings of world football.

- So at this point in the investigation,

has the ExCo had a vote on who's going to get the next World Cup?

- When we initiated the investigation, we knew that

in a couple of months there was going to be a vote

for the World Cup for 2018 and 2022.

Part of the information we had obtained was that Russia

was going to corruptly influence the vote.

- It is indeed a great day today, here in Zurich.

The 2018 FIFA World Cup, ladies and gentlemen,

will be organized in Russia.

: At that point, we realize, this is the big break.

We couldn't believe it.

Let us make history together.

This is not a small thing.

Heads of state are involved.

One of the things we learned was that corruption in FIFA

had been in the media for years, overseas.

But in the States we didn't see it.

: Good morning, welcome to Zurich.

How much profit did you make selling World Cup tickets this year?

Do you know which football officials took bribes?

- I don't answer these questions.

- Reporting on corruption and saying

something is corrupt is one thing.

: Right.

- Proving it in a court of law, particularly

in the United States, is a completely different story.

: A prayer, I suspect from Kumagii.

And the World Cup for Japan!

They have rewritten the history books.

: Shortly after the announcement that the vote for 2018

went to Russia, we bring IRS on to join in on the case.

And so the idea was let's look from a tax perspective

at Chuck in particular.

The information that came back was Chuck hadn't paid taxes

for almost 20 years.

- And when you say hasn't paid taxes in 20 years,

we're not talking about like he made $10,000 a year

and he just didn't file--

- Well, we didn't know how much money because

he didn't report it. - Right.

- However, working at the highest levels of FIFA,

living the lifestyle that he did in Trump Tower in New York City,

traveling the world, we knew he's got money

and he's living it up, not reporting any of it.

That is leverage that you can now utilize

to obtain his cooperation.

- Based on the tax information, and potentially

he could be ripe for the flip.

Right.

Approaching an individual to try and get them

to cooperate, you have to be very strategic about it

if you're doing a criminal enterprise case.

- Absolutely - Because it's not about Chuck.

No.

- The case is about a much bigger picture.

If the approach with Chuck fails, then everybody will know

what we're trying to do because he'll tell everybody.

- Yeah. - You have to plan out

how to do so in a way that is the least public way possible.

And you do that just old school surveillance,

trying to figure out his routine.

And the idea was to wait near Trump Tower.

Odds are he's coming out and going to dinner.

He was always out eating dinner.

They approach him and said: "We need to speak with you.

You have some issues that you need to explain."

He was taken aback at first.