Sepp Blatter, recently re-elected president of FIFA, the soccer world governing body, criticized U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the federal investigation into his organization.
“No one is going to tell me that it was a simple coincidence, this American attack two days before the elections of FIFA. It doesn’t smell good,” Blatter said Friday. “Why would I step down? That would mean I recognize that I did wrong. I fought for the last three or four years against all the corruption.”
Blatter said he was “shocked” U.S. federal authorities would target FIFA, the football world governing body. He also called the corruption investigation a “hate” campaign by Europe’s football leaders.
“It is a hate that comes not just from a person at UEFA,” he said of resignation calls by Michel Platni, president of the Union of European Football Association. “It comes from the UEFA organization that cannot understand that in 1998 I became president.”
Two FIFA vice presidents, as well as a recently elected FIFA executive committee member, were among seven men arrested in Zurich, Switzerland, and accused of a corruption scandal this week worth $150 million and spanning over decades. In total, nine officials and five sports executives have been charged charged.
Blatter remains free of charges, but he’s not pleased with the U.S. government looking into him.
“Listen, with all the respect to the judicial system of the U.S. with a new minister of justice,” Blatter said, taking aim at the U.S. Attorney General. “The Americans, if they have a financial crime that regards American citizens then they must arrest these people there and not in Zurich when we have a congress.”
Blatter won his re-election as FIFA president with a 133-73 vote in favor. At 79, he will now serve his fifth four-year term.
(h/t The Guardian)
