The exclusive account of how a small band of federal agents and an outsized corrupt official brought down the sports world’s biggest governing body.
Chuck Blazer looked out the window of his $18,000-a-month Trump Tower apartment, with its view of New York’s Central Park. Most tourists on Fifth Avenue below could only dream of his kind of high-rise life. But after years of lavish excess, he was no longer fixated on the trappings of his success. On this day, standing only in an adult diaper as a small team of FBI agents prepared to wire him with a recording device, Blazer just wanted to stay out of prison.
The native New Yorker hardly resembled his image as a statesman of soccer—an infamous bon vivant who made so much money for the game’s international governing body, FIFA, that he was hailed as its virtuoso deal maker. He dined often with sheikhs and heirs at the trendiest restaurants and attended society events with a rotating cast of striking companions. His personal travel blog pictured him with the likes of Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin and Miss Universe. At 400 pounds, with an unruly white beard and mane, he looked like Santa Claus, talked like a bricklayer and lived like a 1-percenter.
Blazer’s big secret, as he looked down on the Manhattan streets, seems so obvious now: He had embezzled his fortune through kickbacks and bribes. And the people who would uncover the scam were with him today, in his apartment, about to dispatch him to take down FIFA.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 29,2016-Ausgabe von ESPN The Magazine.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 29,2016-Ausgabe von ESPN The Magazine.
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