The Long Arm of the US Judiciary in the FIFA Scandal

In the country of football, baseball and basketball, “soccer” is still considered a type of girls’ sport. But now, ironically, the Americans are shaking the foundations of the world football governing body, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) , with their revelations.

This makes for plenty of ridicule and malice on the Internet. The purport of the arguments: The U.S. may not be able to win a World Cup, but in explosive investigations, they’re champions.

Rarely does the image of the American “world police” and “Mr. Clean” emerge so clearly in matters of corruption as it has with the arrests of FIFA officials in a Zurich luxury hotel. But how can the arm of the U.S. judiciary extend across the Atlantic? Is Uncle Sam exceeding his legal borders, as claimed by the Russian foreign ministry in an angry statement? Isn’t the U.S. assuming a bit too much?

From a legal point of view, a small act is needed, a kind of anchor, in order to seize foreign citizens. In essence — part of the offense must have been committed within U.S. jurisdiction, explains law professor Jessica Tillipman from George Washington University Law School. This could be a phone call with someone in the U.S., a visit to the United States or an email that has passed through a server in the U.S., she told the Washington Post.

Sometimes even a flight to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport is enough, as this falls within the jurisdiction of the U.S. attorney’s office in the New York borough of Brooklyn. There only needs to be a “touch point,” says Tillipman.

In FIFA’s case, it’s the flow of illegal funds via banks based in New York. “Over the course of the 1990s and increasingly in the 2000s and 2010s, the defendants and their co-conspirators relied heavily on the United States financial system,” the 161-page indictment states. FIFA has allegedly paid billions of dollars from its accounts in Switzerland to recipient accounts in the United States and other parts of the world. Some of the bribes are reported to have been paid into New York correspondent accounts at JP Morgan and Citibank.

There is also talk of several meetings in Miami and the New York borough of Queens in the indictment. According to the U.S. attorney’s office, arrangements were made for the bribes at these meetings. “If you touch our shores with your corrupt enterprise, whether that is through meetings or through using our world class financial system, you will be held accountable for that corruption,” said FBI Director James Comey, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Each case varies with regard to whether or not the country concerned cooperated with Americans. In the case of FIFA, Switzerland may well have supported the U.S., but it is unclear whether those arrested will also be extradited. In general, governments are increasingly working together in such criminal offense cases, says legal expert Tillipman: “We’re kind of seeing an internationalization of criminal law.”

The government in Washington already considers the crackdown a success. The government never had qualms about bringing charges in the U.S., although many of the offenses were committed abroad, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told The New York Times. She compares the FIFA investigation to the cases involving Mafia members in Rome or Sicily. The U.S. banking system reportedly formed part of the football officials’ system. “They clearly thought the U.S. was a safe financial haven for them,” Lynch said.