DOJ indictment · 2015 FIFA — The $150 Million Bribery Racket

On 27 May 2015 the US Department of Justice unsealed a 47-count, 164-page indictment charging seven FIFA executives with taking some $150 million in bribes over more than two decades; they were arrested in dawn raids at a Zürich hotel. The DOJ alleged "two generations of soccer officials" had turned FIFA into a corrupt racketeering enterprise built on bribes for TV and marketing rights. Over the following years US prosecutors charged 45+ people and entities with 90+ crimes involving more than $200 million in bribes. President Sepp Blatter — re-elected days after the arrests — resigned that June and was later banned from football. The rot was structural, adjudicated, and decades deep.