FIFA Asks US Government to Give Back Seized Bribe Money Amounting to 'Hundreds of Millions' of Dollars
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) made an unlikely move on Tuesday night by demanding for the bribe money that was seized from them by the United States government.
According to a report by Rebecca Ruiz for the New York Times, FIFA asked the US Justice Department for a share of the "hundreds of millions" of dollars that was collected from the defendants involved in the case. In December 2015, news broke about the corruption within members of FIFA's participating countries wherein more than 40 defendants have been slapped with charges by the United States Justice Department.
In another New York Times report, the charges include 24 nationalities, which are predominantly with the North, South, and Central America regions. Ruiz's report noted, however, that FIFA as a governing body is trying to "play victim", mainly to distance themselves as an organization from the erring parties.
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"Enabling FIFA's request is the United States government itself, which has characterized the organization as a victim of its leaders' crimes. A basic premise of the Justice Department's case is that soccer officials robbed FIFA and its confederations of their honest services," an excerpt of Ruiz's report reads.
However, despite the position that FIFA has placed itself in, collecting the money would not be as simple as it may seem.
According to Serina Vash, former federal prosecutor and executive director of the program on corporate compliance and enforcement at New York University's law school, FIFA does not automatically qualify to be granted with the money, since victims that "knowingly contribute to, participate in, benefit from or act in a willfully blind manner towards the commission of the offense" are not allowed to do so.
Vash says that in order for the organization to be able to collect the money, they must prove that they have not been paid for their losses.
Ruiz's report also noted that FIFA had also claimed to lose money while cooperating with US and Switzerland authorities in the last ten months.
