Swiss prosecutor’s meagre record in FIFA corruption scandal

Keystone / Walter Bieri

The arrests of seven officials from world football’s governing body FIFA at a luxury hotel in Zurich grabbed international news headlines in May 2015. They also landed Switzerland in the middle of a corruption scandal. Eight years later, the Swiss inquiry into this gigantic affair has yielded slim results. 

The Swiss attorney-general’s office opened its first investigation into world football a few months before the famous police raid at Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich. It was examining the processes behind the selection of Russia as host of the 2018 World Cup and of Qatar for 2022. The investigation was prompted by a report submitted after FIFA filed a criminal complaint against unknown persons at the end of 2014. 

While this investigation was launched in complete secrecy, the arrests in Zurich increased national and international public pressure on Switzerland. Media coverage of the operation also prompted a large number of reports from various Swiss financial intermediaries to the country’s Money Laundering Reporting Office. 

Faced with this accumulation of financial information, the federal prosecutor set up a special task force. In all, 25 criminal investigations were opened, making it one of the largest inquiries ever undertaken by the prosecutor’s office. What is the current status of these investigations? 

Three convicted by criminal order 

Submitting an indictment to the Federal Criminal Court and obtaining a conviction is not so straightforward, as these cases show. In some instances, prosecutors decided to order a criminal trial. To date, three people have been convicted in this way: 

• June 2017: Jorge Luis Arzuaga, a former employee of private bank Julius Bär, was convicted of forgery and breach of disclosure obligations. He admits to having enabled the payment of more than $25 million (CHF22.6 million) in bribes to officials of the Argentine football federation by Alejandro Burzaco, head of the sports marketing company Torneos y Competencias SA. The investigation was opened on the basis of information passed on by the bank; 
• November 2019: Genaro Aversa, son-in-law of Julio Grondona, the deceased former head of the Argentine football federation, is convicted of forgery. He had helped his wife to recover illicit funds that “Don Julio” had deposited at Julius Bär; 
• December 2020: Eduardo Deluca, the Argentinian former secretary-general of the South American Football Confederation, CONMEBOL, is convicted of money laundering, embezzlement and criminal mismanagement. He had embezzled $300,000 from CONMEBOL accounts. The former president of the football confederation, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay, stood accused of embezzling CHF8.3 million, but died before going on trial. The investigation was launched following a disclosure by Credit Suisse. 

Trials without convictions 

In the last three years, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office has also filed three indictments relating to corruption in football. However, the results of these proceedings are thin: 

• September 2020: Jérôme Valcke (former FIFA secretary-general), Nasser Al-Khelaifi (the director of BeIN Media Group and chairman of football club Paris Saint-Germain), and a Greek businessman active in the field of sporting rights appear before the Federal Criminal Court. Valcke, who is French, is accusedExternal link of having received more than €1 million as well as a villa on the Italian island of Sardinia in exchange for awarding media rights for several World Cups. While Al-Khelaifi and the third defendant were acquitted, Valcke was found guilty of document forgery but was acquitted of the main charge of criminal mismanagement. The prosecutor appealed and, in July 2022, the Court of Appeal found Valcke and the Greek businessman to be guilty of a number of actsExternal link of private corruption. The verdict is not yet final; 
• May 2021: The Federal Criminal Court announcesExternal link that criminal proceedings over suspicious payments made in connection with the 2006 football World Cup in Germany have been dropped. The prosecutor’s office had accused Horst Rudolf Schmidt, Theo Zwanziger, Wolfgang Niersbach (former officials of the German Football Association and co-chairmen of its organising committee for the tournament) and Urs Linsi (a former FIFA secretary-general) of fraud or complicity in fraud. The trial began in March 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and was suspended due to the absence of the defendants. The case was eventually dismissed on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired; 
• July 2022: The Federal Criminal Court acquitsExternal link the former president of FIFA, Joseph Blatter, and Michel Platini, the former president of the European football federation, UEFA. The two defendants were accusedExternal link of arranging an illegal payment of CHF2 million from FIFA to Platini. The prosecutor’s office has appealed, requesting a full repeal of the decision. In December 2022, the appeals chamber of the Federal Criminal Court suspendedExternal link proceedings due to an application for the recusal of the entire court. This request for recusal has now beenExternal link partially granted. 

Several cases dropped 

In recent years, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office has dropped several investigations into world football for various reasons: the approaching expiry of statutes of limitations, investigations already underway in other countries, or a lack of judicial cooperation from other states. Here are a few examples: 

• November 2017: an investigation into UEFA’s broadcasting rights was closed; 
• July 2018: closure of criminal proceedings relating to the marketing rights for the 2014 World Cup; 
• October 2019: closure of an investigation into suppliers of goal-line technology; 
• September 2020: closure of another caseExternal link against Deluca, the Argentinian former secretary-general of CONMEBOL, who already faces prosecution in Argentina; 
• March 2021: closure of criminal proceedings against a former Sri Lankan football manager, Vernon Manilal Fernando; 
• February 2022: criminal proceedings relating to sponsorship rights for the Copa América are dropped; 
• August 2022: closure of an investigation into the awarding of hosting contracts for the 2017 Confederations Cup and the 2018 World Cup in Russia; 
• August 2022: closure of criminal proceedings relating to a $1 million loan from FIFA to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation. This investigation targeted Sepp Blatter directly. 

Close to 100 million documents seized 

In the context of these investigations, 160 interviews were conducted and 40 searches were carried out. Around 200 reports by the Swiss Money Laundering Reporting Office were analysed, and the prosecutor seized 90 million documents. 

Ultimately CHF42 million was confiscated and/or returned to injured parties such as CONMEBOL. A further CHF9 million were frozen in Switzerland and transferred to the United States, where they were confiscated as part of US criminal investigations. 

Contacted by SWI swissinfo.ch, the prosecutor’s office explained that this complex investigation into football “remains one of the largest and most elaborate carried out by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office” and that “given that many of the facts under investigation dated back to long before proceedings even began, the investigations have, from the outset, been subject to a certain amount of pressure due to statutes of limitations”. 

According to the prosecutor, one of the main challenges in football investigations as a whole “is the complexity due to the international nature of the facts under investigation, in particular due to the residence abroad of many of the persons involved in the proceedings, as well as the need to investigate cross-border commercial activities and money flows through several countries”.  

As a result of this international component, Swiss prosecutors are dependent on third countries agreeing to provide international judicial assistance in criminal matters in order to establish the facts. Due to different political and legal framework conditions, not all states provide mutual assistance to the same extent.  

As a result, some requests for mutual legal assistance have so far gone unanswered, despite repeated requests. Among the territories that have not cooperated, the prosecutor names Qatar. In total, Switzerland has opened or executed mutual legal assistance procedures with around 20 countries in these cases. A dozen procedures are still underway. 

Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Translated from French by Catherine Hickley/gw.