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Top FIFA officials have been arrested on charges of corruption and Swiss prosecutors have opened an investigation into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.
The arrests of the seven officials of soccer’s global governing body came at the request of the U.S. Justice Department and are the result of a three-year FBI investigation. The charges “allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals,” according to the New York Times.
The raid in Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city, took place ahead of Friday’s vote to elect FIFA’s new president. Current president Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, who was not among the people arrested, was expected to be re-elected for a fifth term.
The U.S. brought charges against the officials because the alleged crimes and payments in question are thought to have taken place in the U.S. and carried out via U.S. banks, the Swiss Federal Office of Justice said in a statement, according to the Associated Press and BBC News. The seven officials face extradition to the U.S.
“The case is the most significant yet for United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who took office last month,” the Times writes.
Separately, Swiss prosecutors have opened an investigation into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids. “The Swiss prosecutors’ office said the U.S. probe was separate from its investigation but that authorities were working together,” the AP’s Graham Dunbar writes. The Swiss investigation “again throws into the doubt the integrity of the voting to award Russia the 2018 World Cup and the 2022 tournament to Qatar,” Dunbar writes. For now, FIFA has said there will be no revote for the two tournaments.
In a statement on today’s events, the organization writes, “FIFA welcomes actions that can help contribute to rooting out any wrongdoing in football” and is “fully cooperating with the investigation.”
WE’RE KEEPING AN EYE ON
The U.S. Supreme Court will rule on 13 major cases in the coming weeks.
As it heads into the final month of its annual term, the Supreme Court is expected to issue decisions on issues such as civil rights, health care, free speech, and air pollution.
Two notable cases include whether same-sex couples have a right to marry nationwide and whether “the Obama administration may continue to subsidize health insurance for low- and middle-income people who buy coverage in the 36 states that failed to establish an official insurance exchange of their own and instead use a federally run version,” the Los Angeles Times’ David G. Savage writes.
What’s next?
The decisions will come out between now and late June. “If the court rules against the Obama administration, about 8.6 million people could lose their subsidies under the Affordable Care Act,” Savage writes. The New York Times has a good piece on the ACA case if you’re interested in learning more.
And if you want to really look ahead, the Supreme Court said yesterday it will take up a case that could determine how states and localities count their populations when drawing lines for legislative districts, according to the Washington Post. The Court will hear the case in the new term that begins in October.
DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?
The Justice Department and Cleveland’s mayor announced details of an agreement over police conduct.
The 105-page agreement includes provisions for greater citizen input, accountability reforms, more training, and changes to the use of force policy, BuzzFeed News’ Mike Hayes writes.
“The deal, which the Justice Department has reached with many other cities across the country including New Orleans, Seattle and Detroit, are known as consent decrees,” NPR reports. An independent monitor will gauge the reforms and the decree will end after the city demonstrates compliance with its terms.
The agreement follows a December report by federal investigators that alleged Cleveland police officers routinely used unnecessary and excessive force against suspects, violating their constitutional rights. That report was published less than a month after the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Rice’s shooting was not included in the report.
Meet the 10 “most redacted” men in America.
America’s Most Redacted is the first article in a BuzzFeed series written with help from Columbia University’s History Lab, which is developing the “Declassification Engine,” a searchable database of over 2 million declassified government documents. The resulting list includes “diplomats as well as spies, and not all are enemies of the state,” Matthew Connelly, a Columbia University history professor and the principal investigator at History Lab, told BuzzFeed News. “U.S. officials often erase names simply to save embarrassment. Now we are beginning to have the technology to measure this problem,” he said.
Quick things to know:
The death toll in India from an intense heat wave has risen to more than 1,100 people. (Time)
The massive storms in Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico have killed at least 32 people. (BuzzFeed News) And here are 26 photos showing the effects of the destructive floods.
Ireland’s marriage equality win is inspiring new efforts globally as German, Italian, and Australian lawmakers launch new efforts to allow same-sex couples to wed. (BuzzFeed News)
Nevada changed its rape prosecution laws after urging from one of Bill Cosby’s accusers. The state's previous law required sexual assault cases occur within four years to qualify for prosecution, but the new law will allow incidents as old as 20 years to be prosecuted. (USA Today)
Hackers got tax information of more than 100,000 U.S. citizens through an online service provided by the IRS. (BuzzFeed News)
Penn State University’s Kappa Delta Rho fraternity has been shut down after an investigation into two private Facebook pages with photos of nude women — many of them unconscious — were discovered. (BuzzFeed News)
Someone made a Chrome extension that replaces “millennials” with “snake people.” (BuzzFeed News)
Happy Wednesday
5-year-old Maliyah Jones has been battling Stage 4 Neuroblastoma, a type of cancer, since she was 2. Maliyah’s mother was visiting her at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh when she snapped a picture of Maliyah and her 2-year-old friend Madelina, who was diagnosed with myeloid leukemia last year, sharing a beautiful moment. Maliyah’s mother called it the “perfect example of love.” We think so, too.