Chuck Blazer - ‘corrupt self-enrichment’ to kind of hero whistle-blower

In his room at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, Chuck Blazer held his smartphone and checked his email on Wednesday morning. He was far from the soccer bon vivant who once had an enormous appetite for expensive meals, luxury travel, extravagant living and, according to the federal authorities, corrupt self-enrichment.

In more lavish times, Mr. Blazer sometimes carried a parrot on his shoulder. He kept two apartments at Trump Tower in Manhattan, one for himself, the other an office said to be sometimes occupied by his cats. His penchant for collecting commissions as a soccer power broker earned him the nickname Mr. 10 Percent.

Now, in his hospital room, he was pale, and his unruly beard and mane of hair were white. Earlier Wednesday, the federal authorities announced that Mr. Blazer, 70, had pleaded guilty to a 10-count charge that included racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering and income tax evasion as part of a wide-ranging investigation into rampant corruption in international soccer.

The guilty plea was made on November 25th 2013, at which time Mr. Blazer forfeited $1.9 million, the authorities said. He has agreed to pay a second amount to be determined at the time of his sentencing. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years for failing to report foreign bank accounts and five years for tax evasion.

Faced with legal difficulties, Mr. Blazer apparently became a cooperating witness, a knowing insider whose testimony helped lead investigators through the murky world of international soccer and helped result in the indictment of 13 other soccer and marketing officials.

But he had little to say about any of this on Wednesday. Mr. Blazer mouthed the words “I can’t talk” in his room. Asked if he had colon cancer, as reported, he mouthed, “That’s gone,” and pointed to his midsection, referring to another, unspecified surgery. Asked about his prognosis, he made a gesture that suggested hopefulness.

In a telephone call, one of his lawyers, Mary Mulligan, said, "We have no comment."

A former soccer dad from Westchester County who first found success with a company that manufactured smiley-face buttons, Mr. Blazer rose to the highest levels of regional and international soccer, a hefty, gregarious and charismatic man who kept a macaw named Max.

From April 1990 until December 2011, Mr. Blazer served as general secretary, or second in command, of the soccer governing body known as Concacaf, which governs the North American, Central American and Caribbean region. From 1997 until 2013, he was a member of the executive committee of Fifa, soccer's world governing body, and was never the shy and retiring type.

Mr. Blazer kept a blog, called "Travels With Chuck Blazer and his Friends," where photos showed him dressed in a Santa outfit and posing with luminaries including Miss Universe and Nelson Mandela. Upon meeting Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, in November 2010, Mr. Blazer wrote: "He looked at me with a very serious gaze and said, without cracking a smile, 'You know, you look like Karl Marx!' "

Mr. Blazer was always ready with a good line. When Qatar promised to build air-conditioned stadiums for the 2022 World Cup to counter temperatures of 120 degrees, Mr. Blazer quipped, "You can't air-condition a whole country."

But there was a darker side to Mr. Blazer’s activities, according to the federal indictment against him. The indictment charged that he and other conspirators enriched themselves through undisclosed illegal payments, bribes, kickbacks and other moneymaking schemes, including the unauthorised sale of tickets to the World Cup. Cash was smuggled in bulk and concealed in shell companies and bank accounts in tax havens, the indictment said.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribe and kickback payments were wired to accounts controlled by Mr. Blazer from a South American company that sought media and marketing rights to the Gold Cup, a regional tournament, according to the indictment.

In 2004, ahead of voting to award the 2010 World Cup, Mr. Blazer conspired with two other high-ranking soccer officials and agreed to accept $1 million from a $10 million offer by the South African government in an effort to buy votes from Fifa delegates, the indictment said.

Mr. Blazer voted for South Africa, which was awarded the World Cup, the indictment said. He received three payments from a co-conspirator totaling about $750,000, but “never received the balance of the promised $1 million payment.”

In Concacaf, the regional governing body, Blazer long served as the deputy to Jack Warner, the regional president from Trinidad and Tobago. The two had a falling out in 2011, and Mr. Warner resigned from Concacaf and Fifa after being accused in a bribery scheme before the Fifa presidential election that year. Mr. Warner was one of those indicted on Wednesday.

In 2013, a Concacaf report by its integrity committee accused both Mr. Blazer and Mr. Warner of fraud and misappropriation of funds. From 1996 to 2011, Mr. Blazer received more than $20.6 million payments in commissions, fees and rental payments from the regional governing body, much of it with no oversight or authorisation, the report said.

That included a 10 percent commission on Concacaf revenue and $18,000 a month for an apartment in Trump Tower, the report said. Mr. Blazer also purchased luxury accommodations in Miami and the Bahamas using soccer funds, despite “no evidence” of a business reason to do so, the report said. He bought a $48,500 Hummer, which cost $600 a month to park, the report said.

From 2004 to 2011, more than $26 million of Concacaf expenses were charged to Blazer’s personal American Express account, resulting in a commingling of personal and business charges, the report said. This was done, the report said, perhaps because “Blazer had easier access to credit than did Concacaf” or because of “Blazer’s desire to accumulate American Express membership reward points.”

From 2007 to 2011, Mr. Blazer did not file income tax returns in the United States for Concacaf, causing it to lose its tax-exempt status as a nonprofit organisation, the report said.

David Simmons, who headed the Concacaf integrity committee, called the report a "sad and sorry tale" and a tale of "abuse of position and power" by Mr. Blazer and Mr. Warner, who helped bring the governing body to profitability but also "enriched themselves at the expense of their very own positions."

Mr. Blazer left both Concacaf and Fifa but maintained that he was “perfectly satisfied” that he did “an excellent job,” saying once, “I spent 21 years building the confederation and its competitions and its revenues, and I’m the one responsible for its good levels of income.”

But his troubles were not over. Between 2005 and 2010, Mr. Blazer did not file personal income tax returns and tried to conceal his true income from the Internal Revenue Service, according to Wednesday’s indictment.

This led to an unusual confrontation with federal authorities in the autumn of 2011, described last November by The New York Daily News: As Mr. Blazer wheeled down Fifth Avenue on a motorised scooter, headed for a meal at Elaine’s, the now-closed celebrity restaurant, he was intercepted by an agent from the FBI and another from the IRS, and was reportedly told, “We can take you away in handcuffs now or you can cooperate.”

The next summer, The Daily News reported, Mr. Blazer wore a keychain embedded with a microphone at the 2012 London Olympics, and recorded conversations with international soccer officials.

Some may consider Mr. Blazer a kind of hero as a whistle-blower. Others were not so generous. Richard Weber, the chief of criminal investigation for the IRS, told reporters that Mr. Blazer and others were being given a "red card" in "the World Cup of fraud."

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