U.S. indicts, seeks to extradite, top FIFA officials on corruption charges

Early Wednesday, plainclothes Swiss police quietly entered the tony Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, picked up hotel room keys, and arrested at least six FIFA officials on U.S. corruption charges being unsealed in U.S. federal court Wednesday morning. Soccer's governing world body has gathered in Zurich for FIFA's annual meeting, and while FIFA's powerful longtime president, Sepp Blatter, isn't among the 14 FIFA officials and sports marketers indicted, the arrests are a blow to his tenure. Blatter is expected to be elected to a fifth term on Friday

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey, and IRS criminal division head Richard Weber will be in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, to announce the charges on Wednesday morning, The Wall Street Journal reports, underlining the high profile of the charges. "We're struck by just how long this went on for and how it touched nearly every part of what FIFA did," one law enforcement official told The New York Times. "It seems like this corruption was institutionalized."

The U.S. indictment reportedly charges FIFA officials with two decades of pervasive corruption in picking World Cup host countries, marketing deals, and broadcast rights, and the FBI caught a break in its long-running investigation when U.S. former FIFA executive committee member Charles "Chuck" Blazer started cooperating in 2011, agreeing to hand over documents and secretly record conversations. Blazer, who is gravely ill, is clouded by his own ethics problems.

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Among those indicted are two vice presidents of FIFA's secretive 26-member executive committee, Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands and Eugenio Figueredo of Uruguay, plus Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, a former executive committee member.