Chuck
Blazer went from kiddie coach to living large on private jets as general
secretary of CONCACAF. Now he’s Mr. Big of informants in the huge corruption
case rocking world soccer.
One apartment in Trump Tower for
himself.
A second next door for his cats.
More luxury apartments in Florida and the Bahamas.
Credit card charges topping $26 million.
Another $20 million in his pocket.
A blog titled “Travels with Chuck Blazer and His Friends…” featuring a
picture of him on a private plane with a smiling Nelson Mandela.
A private meeting with Vladimir Putin in which the Russian
president tells him he looks just like Karl Marx.
Nights at one for the best tables in the fabled Manhattan
nightspot Elaine’s.
Feasts at such fine restaurants as Campagnola and Dutch.
Chuck Blazer billed all of it—including a Hummer for himself
and health care for his girlfriend—to an international soccer association,
years of graft justified by a sense of entitlement.
He was, after all, the general secretary of FIFA’s
Confederation of North, Central American, and Caribbean Association Football
(CONCACAF), having hustled his way up from kiddie coach to head of the
Westchester County soccer association to the New York state soccer association
to a national position and his eventual prominence.
The one-time suburban soccer dad who had stood so lean with
his 6-year-old son’s team back in 1979 had since been transformed by excess
into a 450-pound personification of ever growing greed.
When he became too corpulent to move around without effort,
he simply got a motorized scooter.
And the hobnobbing and gorging and squandering might have
just kept on and on, for the soccer association was the infamously corrupt FIFA.
The greed turned feverish as Qatar campaigned to become the
site for the 2022 World Cup.
Qatar had broiling heat and scant facilities, and little to recommend itself
beside alot of cash, but that was enough to cinch it.
With that victory, Mohammed Bin Hammam of Qatar apparently
decided that the magic of money might also make him the new president of FIFA.
And here, CONCACAF’s then president, Jack Warner, went from
greedy to plain stupid.
Warner was also president of the Caribbean Football Union
(CFU), which in the past has voted as a bloc in FIFA presidential elections.
Warner called a meeting of the CFU at a Trinidad hotel. Bin
Hammam addressed the group. Warner afterward directed the members to a
conference room to pick up a “gift” for having attended.
Frederick Lunn, vice president of the Bahamas Football
Association, later recounted in an affidavit that he went to the conference
room as instructed.
“When I arrived, the door was locked, so I knocked,” Lunn
recounted. “A male answered the door and asked that I wait a few minutes. Soon
thereafter, the same individual opened the door and invited me in.”
Lunn entered and a woman asked him to sign a form.
“She then handed me a manila envelope with ‘Bahamas’ written
on it,” Lunn remembered. “I opened the envelope, which was stapled, and stacks
of US $100 fell out of the envelope and onto the table. I was stunned to see
the cash. I asked them what it was and they told me it was US $40,000. They
said it was a gift from the CFU and I could count if I wanted.”
Lunn took a picture of the money before returning it.
“Witnessing this was particularly troubling because at this
same time CNN was running stories concerning allegations of bribes being paid
in connection with awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar,” Lunn recounted.
Lunn reported the attempted “gift” to Anton Sealey, the head
of the Bahamas chapter. Sealey reported it to Blazer.
In the past, Warner had suffered few repercussions after
being accused of hustles such as selling 20,000 more tickets to a match than
there were seats.
But Warner had now engaged in something unforgivable: being
party to an apparent attempt to bribe an honest person who then reported it.
Word of it was sure to reach FIFA. And the longtime sitting
president, Sepp Blatter, no doubt take would particular exception, as this
gift-giving was an apparent attempt to unseat him.
All of which left Blazer in jeopardy because he and Warner
had long been considered to be so close that people would meld their names
together and speak of them as one person, ChuckJack.
Chuck moved to separate himself from Jack. Blazer reported
Warner to FIFA, filing an affidavit that is almost certainly an exercise in
perjury.
“I told Mr. Warner I was upset he had caused these payments
to be made. I noted that in 21 years of working together in CONCACAF we had
never paid anyone for a vote,” Blazer said in the sworn statement.
Warner must have sputtered. He had supposedly given Blazer a
cut of the $10 million he allegedly received for voting in favor of South
Africa hosting the 2010 World Cup.
But Warner could not say that without putting himself in a
far deeper hole. Warner resigned, telling reporters only, “The general secretary
that I had employed, who worked with me for 21 years, with the assistance of
elements of FIFA has sought to undermine me in ways that are unimaginable.”
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