Federal racketeering indictments against leaders of the world governing body for professional soccer may turn out to be the smartest foreign policy move President Obama has made in Latin America, a region he is often been accused of ignoring during his presidency.
The organization, FIFA, is widely reviled in Latin America, and the indictments announced Wednesday by Attorney General Loretta Lynch were widely praised in the region. All 14 of those indicted are from the Americas, including the head of CONCACAF, the governing body for soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and the former head of the South American federation, CONMEBOL, who’s now a FIFA vice president.
Also among them was Jose Maria Marin, who led the Brazilian soccer federation CBF through last year’s World Cup and now is vice president of the organization. Marin was one of six FIFA officials arrested in Zurich, Switzerland, early Wednesday on U.S. warrants.
“I think this is going to benefit Brazil,” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said after the indictments were announced, expressing the hope that it would lead to more professionalism in the game.
Rousseff is set to visit Washington on June 30 for talks with Obama. The visit was put off for almost two years after revelations that the National Security Agency was spying on her soured relations between the two leaders.
Though administration officials have said Obama’s opening to Cuba is the main reason U.S. popularity in Latin America is rising after years of leaders in the region feeling neglected by the United States, the indictments are likely to resonate more with residents of those countries.
In Brazil, FIFA’s popularity has plummeted in spite of the World Cup’s success. Many Brazilians perceive the organization and its leaders as pocketing the profits from that event while Brazilians got stuck with the bill for expensive new stadiums that now are underused. Brazilian fans also were underwhelmed by their national team’s historic 7-1 collapse in the semifinals against eventual champion Germany.
The 83-year-old Marin must also deal with the stigma of having been a legislator and state governor during the country’s 1964-85 military dictatorship. The family of murdered journalist Vladimir Herzog unsuccessfully petitioned FIFA in 2013 for Marin’s removal as head of CBF and the committee organizing the World Cup, accusing him of complicity in Herzog’s 1975 death by torture at the hands of the military.
Brazilian soccer great Romario, a former FIFA player of the year and star of the 1994 team that won the World Cup in the United States, congratulated U.S. authorities on Twitter for making the arrests.
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t our police who arrested them,” he tweeted, expressing his hope that FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who was elected to a fifth term on Friday, will join them in custody.
Romario, now a senator in Brazil’s Congress, has been pushing for the appointment of a legislative committee to investigate the accusations, which include an alleged $40 million bribe by an unnamed U.S. apparel company to win sponsorship of the Brazilian national team.
“Brazil is now tied to all that’s worst in terms of sports corruption,” Romario said in a floor speech on Thursday, calling the leaders of CBF “a criminal gang camouflaged by the colors of our flag and our cultural heritage, and solemnly celebrated to the tune of our national anthem.”
Elsewhere in the region, commenters and fans also cheered the move.
“People said I was crazy. Today the FBI revealed the truth,” Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona, a frequent critic of FIFA, told Radio La Red.
In Chile, columnist Juan Cristobal Guerello mocked those indicted.
“Interpol has arrested them for doing what they always did without reproach: behaving as a bigwig in the world of professional football. All the allegations that they face are everyday elements of their activity. That is to say they are an essential part of football for rent,” he wrote.
