by Bill O’Grady

On May 27^th, Swiss authorities arrested several top officials affiliated with Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) on various charges, mostly related to corruption.  Later that day, the U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unveiled indictments against FIFA officials, indicating that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been conducting investigations of corruption for some time and had evidence of illicit schemes going back 24 years.

The ongoing investigation into this scandal continues to unfold as we write this report.  Therefore, we will not spend too much time on arrests or new charges.  Instead, we will offer a short overview of the arrests and the election and resignation of FIFA President Sepp Blatter.  We will discuss the structure of FIFA and how this organization is prone to corruption.  We will follow this discussion with the most important part of the report, the extension of U.S. law enforcement into the international realm as a function of the superpower role.  As always, we will conclude with potential market ramifications.

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