Chuck Blazer: FIFA Corruption, Bribery, and Downfall

Chuck Blazer’s role in FIFA corruption ran in two directions: for two decades as CONCACAF’s general secretary and a FIFA executive committee member he skimmed tens of millions of dollars from the sport and pocketed World Cup bribes, and then, after IRS and FBI agents confronted him with tax charges in late 2011, he became a confidential informant who wore a recorder hidden in a keychain and helped build the 2015 U.S. racketeering case that toppled FIFA’s leadership. He pleaded guilty to ten federal counts in 2013 and died of cancer in July 2017, before he could be sentenced.¹

How Blazer Got the Power to Steal

Blazer met Trinidadian soccer official Jack Warner in 1984 and, by 1989, was running Warner’s campaign for the presidency of CONCACAF, the governing body for soccer in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Warner won in 1990 and appointed Blazer general secretary in return.²

Blazer did not become a CONCACAF employee. Instead, a shell company he controlled called Sportvertising signed a retainer with the confederation on July 31, 1990, entitling him to a 10 percent commission on sponsorship and television rights revenue, a monthly administrative fee, and additional fees on barter deals. An employment lawyer who later reviewed the contract called it “unreal.” A second version was signed on July 18, 1994, with payments routed to a Cayman Islands entity of the same name. That contract expired on July 17, 1998. No new one was ever signed. Blazer simply kept paying himself his 10 percent.²

He moved CONCACAF’s headquarters from Guatemala City to New York and created the CONCACAF Gold Cup, which debuted in 1991. A television deal with Mexican broadcaster Televisa pushed the confederation’s annual revenue from roughly $140,000 to just over $1 million after the first tournament. In October 1994, Brazilian sports marketer José Hawilla signed a contract paying CONCACAF $9.75 million for broadcasting and commercial rights to the next three Gold Cups, and the tournament became the confederation’s main money-maker.³ By 2011, CONCACAF reported $60 million in annual revenue against $31 million in expenses. In 1997, with Warner’s endorsement, Blazer was named to FIFA’s 24-member executive committee and chaired its marketing and television advisory board. He held the FIFA seat until 2013.⁴

“Mr. Ten Percent” and What He Took

Blazer personally controlled CONCACAF’s books, employed a controller who lacked formal accounting training, and operated with almost no oversight from the executive committee. He quietly expanded his 10 percent commission well beyond sponsorship and TV rights to cover nearly every dollar the confederation generated, including ticket sales, luxury box rentals, parking fees, and hot dog sales. Colleagues nicknamed him “Mr. Ten Percent.”⁵

Between 1991 and 2011, Blazer collected nearly $22 million from CONCACAF. In 2011 alone, his compensation was nearly double that of all other CONCACAF employees and directors combined. The CONCACAF Integrity Committee later determined that after his contract expired in 1998, Blazer caused the confederation to pay him more than $15 million in commissions, fees, and rent without any authorization at all.⁶

He also treated CONCACAF’s accounts as a personal wallet. The confederation paid $18,000 a month for his apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan, plus a second unit in the same building used to house his cats; in 2011, personal residence expenses reached $259,000.⁷ It paid $1.4 million toward a timeshare at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, held through an offshore shell company he controlled, and $810,000 for apartments at the Mondrian in Miami’s South Beach.⁸ It bought him a $48,500 Hummer SUV and covered over $600 a month for parking and insurance on it. A CONCACAF American Express account absorbed nearly $30 million in charges between 2004 and 2011, of which at least $3 million were identified as Blazer’s personal spending, and he used the loyalty points for first-class travel of his own.²

The mechanics leaned on Cayman Islands shell companies and on deducting personal expenses from the revenue pool before calculating his own fees, a strategy tax attorneys identified as a potential method for avoiding income reporting. Blazer also willfully failed to file federal tax returns for CONCACAF’s subsidiary CMTV from 2004 through 2010 and for CONCACAF itself from 2006 through 2010.⁶

World Cup Bribes

Blazer’s misconduct was not confined to skimming CONCACAF. As a FIFA executive committee member he held a vote on where the World Cup would be played, and he admitted to taking bribes tied to at least two bids.

In connection with the selection of South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup, prosecutors said South African Football Association president Molefi Oliphant asked FIFA to withhold $10 million from the tournament budget to fund a “Diaspora Legacy Programme” under Jack Warner’s control. FIFA wired the money to accounts Warner controlled. Blazer was promised a $1 million share and received $750,000 from Warner in three installments between 2008 and 2011.⁹ South African officials denied the payment was a bribe and characterized it as an aboveboard contribution to Caribbean football development.¹⁰

Blazer also admitted involvement in bribery surrounding the 1998 World Cup, which France won over Morocco in a 12–7 vote, telling the court he had agreed with others “to facilitate the acceptance of a bribe” in that bidding process. The DOJ indictment alleged that a Moroccan bid representative offered a $1 million payment, with Warner named as the recipient.⁹ He further admitted receiving bribes related to five editions of the Gold Cup.¹¹ In March 1999, a $200,000 bribe tied to Gold Cup media rights was wired to one of Blazer’s Cayman Islands accounts through a Uruguayan shell company; he kept half and sent the other half to Warner in Trinidad.³

The Break With Warner

The Warner–Blazer partnership collapsed in May 2011. On May 10, at a Caribbean Football Union meeting at the Hyatt Regency in Trinidad, Qatari FIFA executive committee member Mohamed bin Hammam gave a campaign speech to delegates as part of his challenge to Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency. Afterward, officials lined up in a conference room to collect unmarked brown envelopes containing $40,000 each in new $100 bills.¹² Fred Lunn, vice-president of the Bahamas Football Association, reported the envelope to his association president, Anton Sealey, who reported it to Blazer. Blazer hired attorney John P. Collins to investigate; Collins concluded that bin Hammam and Warner had caused about $1 million in cash payments to be distributed or attempted to CFU officials in violation of FIFA’s ethics code. Blazer forwarded the allegations to FIFA on May 24.¹³

On May 29, 2011, FIFA’s ethics committee suspended both men. Bin Hammam was ultimately banned from football for life. Warner resigned from all his football positions before a judgment issued.¹⁴ With his patron gone, Blazer’s own base in the sport turned on him. A CONCACAF internal investigation soon followed.

How He Got Caught and Turned Informant

By the time CONCACAF’s integrity committee published its findings in April 2013, Blazer had already been cooperating with the U.S. government for more than a year. Agents from the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation Division approached him roughly eight months before the 2012 London Olympics — around late 2011 — after discovering he had failed to pay taxes on millions of dollars in income.¹⁵ The charges carried a maximum combined sentence of 75 years in prison. He agreed to cooperate.¹⁶

His cooperation agreement, formally dated November 25, 2013, referenced eleven written agreements between Blazer and the government running from December 29, 2011, through November 2013. He agreed to provide truthful information, participate in undercover activities as directed by law enforcement, testify at future trials, and pay more than $11 million in back taxes.¹⁷

In practice, that meant wearing a wire. Blazer used a listening device hidden inside a keychain fob to secretly record conversations with soccer officials.¹⁸ Before he deployed the device at the London Olympics, his U.S. handlers had to obtain approval from Scotland Yard. At the Games, Blazer arranged meetings with Russian, Australian, Hungarian, and American officials involved in campaigns to host future World Cups.¹⁵

The 2013 Guilty Plea

On November 25, 2013, Blazer waived indictment and secretly pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn before Judge Raymond J. Dearie in United States v. Charles Blazer, 13 Cr. 602 (RJD).¹⁹ The ten counts were:

One count of racketeering conspiracy
One count of wire fraud conspiracy
One count of money laundering conspiracy
Six counts of income tax evasion
One count of willful failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR)

Blazer admitted to more than $11 million in unreported income for the years 2005 through 2010 and disclosed an unreported account at FirstCaribbean International Bank in the Bahamas containing $975,751. He forfeited $1,958,092, agreed to an FBAR civil penalty of $487,875, and agreed to sign over his FIFA pension if necessary to satisfy government debts. Further financial penalties were left for sentencing.²⁰¹⁷

The plea stayed sealed for nearly two years. It was first partially revealed in the May 2015 DOJ indictment, where Blazer was identified as “Co-Conspirator #1,” and was fully unsealed by Judge Dearie’s order in June 2015.¹¹

What His Cooperation Produced

On May 27, 2015, the Justice Department unsealed a 47-count, 161-page indictment charging 14 defendants with racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering as part of a 24-year scheme involving more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks tied to media and marketing rights for international soccer tournaments.¹⁹ The indicted officials included Jeffrey Webb (Blazer’s successor as CONCACAF president), Jack Warner, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel, José Maria Marin, and Nicolás Leoz, along with five sports marketing and broadcasting executives. Swiss police arrested seven defendants at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich the morning the indictment was unsealed.

The government alleged that FIFA and its confederations functioned as an “enterprise” facilitating financial crimes, establishing U.S. jurisdiction by pointing to American banks in New York, Florida, and California used to process corrupt payments.²¹ Prosecutors simultaneously unsealed the guilty pleas of Blazer, José Hawilla, and Jack Warner’s sons Daryan and Daryll, plus two corporate defendants, Traffic Sports USA and Traffic Sports International.

Blazer’s years of undercover work were central to building the case. Al Jazeera described his recorded conversations and testimony as “key in the FIFA corruption scandal” that “ultimately led to the downfall of Sepp Blatter.”²² Blatter resigned as FIFA president in June 2015, days after the indictments were announced.

CONCACAF filed its own civil lawsuit in federal court in Brooklyn accusing Warner and Blazer of embezzlement, bribery, and kickbacks tied to broadcasting rights for the Gold Cup and other tournaments, seeking $20 million in compensatory damages plus unspecified punitive damages. FIFA filed a separate restitution claim demanding tens of millions of dollars.²³

Lifetime Ban From Football

On July 9, 2015, FIFA’s ethics committee adjudicatory chamber imposed a lifetime ban on Blazer from all football-related activities. The committee found him guilty of violating FIFA rules on general conduct, loyalty, confidentiality, duty of disclosure, conflicts of interest, offering and accepting gifts, and bribery and corruption. In its ruling, the chamber said Blazer “committed many and various acts of misconduct continuously and repeatedly” and called him “a key player in schemes involving the offer, acceptance, payment and receipt of undisclosed and illegal payments, bribes and kickbacks as well as other money-making schemes.”²⁴

Death Before Sentencing

Blazer disclosed at his November 2013 plea hearing that he was suffering from rectal cancer, diabetes, and coronary artery disease.²⁵ His sentencing was originally scheduled for April 2017, but his attorney, Mary Mulligan, requested a six-month adjournment because of his deteriorating health. Blazer died on July 12, 2017, at age 72 in a hospital in New Jersey. He was never sentenced.¹

The broader prosecution his cooperation launched continued after his death but gradually wound down. In December 2025, the DOJ asked to dismiss the case against former 21st Century Fox executive Hernan Lopez and the Argentine sports marketing company Full Play Group, whose 2023 bribery convictions had bounced between the trial court and the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A federal judge granted the request on May 27, 2026. The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York said the prosecution was no longer a priority, though the DOJ emphasized it was not seeking to reverse any of the guilty pleas or convictions already obtained from other defendants.²⁶

1
The New York Times. Chuck Blazer, Central Figure in FIFA Scandal, Dies at 72
2
BuzzFeed News. The Rise and Fall of Chuck Blazer
3
The New York Times/The Athletic. How Traffic Bribed Its Way to an Empire Built on the Copa America
4
Sports Video Group. Longtime FIFA/CONCACAF Executive Chuck Blazer Dead at 72
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ESPN. Chuck Blazer Leaves Complex Legacy of Corruption
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CONCACAF Integrity Committee. Report of Investigation
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The Guardian. Chuck Blazer and the FBI
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VOA News. Chuck Blazer Dies After Exposing Corruption He Profited From
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The Guardian. Chuck Blazer Admits to FIFA Bribes for World Cup
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ESPN. Ex-FIFA Exec Chuck Blazer Admits Receiving Bribes
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Sports Illustrated. FIFA Scandal: Chuck Blazer Plea Deal and Informant Role
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The Guardian. Mohamed bin Hammam and FIFA
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Court of Arbitration for Sport. CAS 2011/A/2625 Mohamed Bin Hammam v. FIFA
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CBS News. FIFA Exec Bin Hammam Banned for Life for Bribery
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New York Daily News. Brits Ablaze Over Chuck Blazer FBI Informant Work
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The Guardian. Chuck Blazer: FIFA Ban, Back Taxes, and Plea Deal
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ESPN. Chuck Blazer Worked Undercover Informing on FIFA
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CNN. FIFA Bans Chuck Blazer for Life
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U.S. Department of Justice. Nine FIFA Officials and Five Corporate Executives Indicted
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NBC News. Former FIFA Official Chuck Blazer Admitted Corruption Charges
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American Society of International Law. ASIL Insight on FIFA Indictment
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Al Jazeera. FIFA Whistleblower Chuck Blazer Dies at 72
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ESPN. CONCACAF Files Suit Against Ex-FIFA Officials
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ESPN. FIFA Bans Chuck Blazer From Football for Life
25
CNN. Chuck Blazer Death
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CNN. FIFA Case Bribery Not a Priority