The sword is at the gate

One of the earliest cases of sports corruption is described in the Greek myth of Pelope, who was welcomed to Hippodomia, the daughter of King Enoma. But Enomay himself lusted to Hippodemia, and therefore arranged a contest on chariots with each applicant for her hand, and let the opponent break out forward. Overtaking the groom, he killed him with a spear with a spear. Wanting to avoid such a fate, Pelop on the eve of the competition conspired with the driver of Enoma Mirtil. He himself was in love with Hippodomia, and Pelop promised him for the service of half a dignity and one night of the possession of hippodemia. Mirtil replaced the metal check in the chariot of Enoma Voskova. The chariot of Enoya crashed, and the king himself died. But Pelop did not want to share either the kingdom or his wife and pushed Mortil into the sea. Falling, Mortil cursed Pelop's family.

Nowadays, when the most spectacular sports have turned into a multi -billion dollar business, accusations of corruption haunt sports officials no worse than Erini, who drove the poor Orestes crazy. This time the role of the evil goddesses of revenge was taken by the authorities of Switzerland. The case introduced an extremely convenient: in the Zurich hotel, all the leadership of the International Football Federation (FIFA) gathered at its next congress. The detention operation was carried out on Wednesday in the early morning - presumably, suspects were pulled out of beds. At first, names were not called. The arrested were taken through the reverse, closing from the paparazzi sheets, apparently borrowed from the hotel administration.

On the same day in New York, US law enforcement agencies convened a press conference . It was attended by Minister of Justice Loretta Lynch and FBI director James Komi. Such a high level indicates not only the meaning that FIFA is given in Washington, but also about the weight of the evidence collected.

Loretta Lynch described corruption in international football as "unrestrained, systematic and deeply rooted." The self -interest, according to Lynch, “took up at least two generations of football officials” who received millions of dollars as bribes and kickbacks.

In charges against FIFA functionaries American justice, there is not a word about world championships in Russia and Qatar. We are talking about broadcasting contracts and marketing transactions, when preference turned out to be companies that offered the most generous bribe.

The first messages from the ocean allowed Russian officials to cheerfully claim that there are no complaints about them and the investigation in no way applies to Russia. However, the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation Vitaly Mutko did not have time to say this by phone from Zurich, as he was invited for interrogation .

The fact of the matter is that the department of the Prosecutor General of Switzerland conducts its own investigation - it finds out precisely the circumstances of the decision on the holding of the world championships in Russia and Qatar. The arrests were made on the proposal of the United States. All arrested are football functionaries from the countries of the Western Hemisphere. However, Lynch and Komi warned that this was only the beginning. Well, when there was information that the main informant of the FBI was a former member of the executive committee FIFA Blayser, Russian football superiors must have struck cold sweat.

Blazer, who served as the Secretary General of the Confederation of Football of North and Central America and the Caribbean basin (Concacap), headed the FIFA Executive Committee and was a member of the advisory council for marketing. In his own words , he maintains long -standing friendly relations with Mutko and other sports leaders of Russia (Blazer was the chairman of the organizing committee of the World Cup among the 2006 girls in Russia, and then Mutko was the president of the Russian Football Union). He came to Russia more than once as part of FIFA delegations and with private visits, met with Vladimir Putin. And he ardently supported both Russian and Qatari applications.

In May 2013, he was temporarily suspended from work in the FIFA Executive Committee for a period of 90 days due to suspicions of financial fraud. Apparently, it was at that moment that the US Ministry of Justice charged him with conspiracy to extort, fraud, money laundering and tax evasion on an especially large scale. Blazer entered into a deal with justice: he found himself guilty, returned about two million dollars from his illegal income, promised to return the rest and agreed to cooperate with the FBI.

Since then, he went to private meetings with colleagues with a hidden microphone under clothes. You can only guess what Vitaly Mutko spoke with him “Frome Haz Hart”, even if in published conversations with the then Prime Minister Putin, it was about the tax paradise for FIFA and its business partners and that Russia agrees to any conditions of FIFA.

According to the New York Daily News newspaper, Blayser’s cooperation with the FBI began back in November 2011. The British Independent reported the FBI investigation against Blayser in August of the same year. So at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, he arrived with a microphone under Sorochka. Russian officials are among those who were especially interested in the FBI and with whom Blazer agreed in advance about the meetings. Such meetings at the London Hotel May Fair were held, in particular, with the General Director of the Russia-2018 Organizing Committee Alexei Sorokin, assistant Mutko Anton Baranov, the president of the Fencing International Fencing Charitable Foundation, Vitaly Logvin. It is likely that the room where these meetings took place was equipped with a video camera.

The New York Daily News in paints painted the lifestyle of Chuck Blayser, who, in addition to a huge salary, received commission from all transactions concluded Concacap. The Confederation paid him exorbitant personal expenses, including the apartment in the New York skyscraper Trump Tower, which he was holding exclusively for his cats. Blazer has not paid 10 years. “He lived without thinking about tomorrow,” one of the anonymous sources of the newspaper expressed about him.

But all this is in the past. Currently, the 69 -year -old Blazer is hard - he has a colon cancer. Whether he will live to the court is a big question.

FIFA constantly repeats that the transfer of the venues of the 2018 and 2022 championships can not be discussed and that the President of the Zepp Blatter federation is not affected by the investigation. However, in any case, the opened abroad will not heal soon.