For years, many people have wanted to take Sepp Blatter down and former US Attorney, Michael Garcia, spent two years doing an internal investigation for FIFA of how Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 came to be. It confused some that Blatter would choose a highly experienced individual like Garcia, who was an American lawyer, who served as a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York from 1992-2001 participating in the prosecution of four defendants for the World Trade Center attack in 1993 and the 1998 attacks on the American Embassies in East Africa, who was hired by President Bush in 2003 as the Assistant Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who worked on securities fraud, who helped illuminate the prostitution scandal of the 54th Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. It was Garcia’s task within the iron-clad walls of FIFA, as he said, to go after “…any official, top down, for misconduct…no one is above the ethics code.” http://www.bbc.com/news/world-30035670 So did it surprise Blatter that Garcia would irritate Executive Members by just walking into offices, questioning them without notice? As an outsider that didn’t know much about FIFA going into the investigation, he seemed to take the job seriously, trying to expose any and all guilty offenders from the World Cup bids. Eventually, Garcia resigned, frustrated with FIFA, who he said lacked good leadership and transparency. By the time FIFA flipped the whole thing and was critical of his investigation Garcia had had enough. In the larger picture, to many eyes, he tried his best to highlight corruption in the World Cup bids of Russia and Qatar, and, as a result he was scolded. Basically, following the “resignation” of Garcia, FIFA cleared itself of any wrongdoing, saying the bidding process was “fair and thorough.” As a stately gesture to the world to show how fair they are, FIFA went to a lot of effort to hire this person, to investigate their own conduct, and in the end they say the investigator did a poor job… despite “questionable conduct” by two individuals surrounding the Qatar bid; these two did not hold official positions in soccer, so, therefore, were not bound by FIFA’s Ethics Code…Furthermore, the bid team of Russia could only hand over limited information about the bid because they had stored it on computers and mysteriously the computers had been destroyed. Insufficient evidence against Russia cleared them for the bid.
However, things got more interesting when Garcia was named to Russia’s list of 18 Americans banned from entering Russia, due to the Magnitsky List, which caused a big stir. (The Russian government also banned Americans from adopting Russian children.) Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer that had investigated the fraudulent activities of Russian tax officials. In 2009, Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison and it was suspected by the Obama Administration that revenge was a motive. In defiance to his death the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs handed over to the House of Representatives the bill known as “The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.” This was a direct move by the US government to make a firm stand against the corrupt handling of Magnitsky, who in fact, ironically, was investigating a corruption scheme that led to his death. As a result, the US government made a list of 18 Russians thought to be associated with Magnitsky’s death, physically prohibiting them access to the United States and their American banking accounts. So why would Garcia be added to Russia’s list of Americans not welcome inside Russia? Clearly, his disapproval of the controversial 2018 World Cup bid was not appreciated by Putin and his colleagues. Putin is very supportive of Sepp Blatter, FIFA and all too thrilled to have out bid England for the honor of hosting the World Cup.
However, things got more interesting when Garcia was named to Russia’s list of 18 Americans banned from entering Russia, due to the Magnitsky List, which caused a big stir. (The Russian government also banned Americans from adopting Russian children.) Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer that had investigated the fraudulent activities of Russian tax officials. In 2009, Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison and it was suspected by the Obama Administration that revenge was a motive. In defiance to his death the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs handed over to the House of Representatives the bill known as “The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.” This was a direct move by the US government to make a firm stand against the corrupt handling of Magnitsky, who in fact, ironically, was investigating a corruption scheme that led to his death. As a result, the US government made a list of 18 Russians thought to be associated with Magnitsky’s death, physically prohibiting them access to the United States and their American banking accounts. So why would Garcia be added to Russia’s list of Americans not welcome inside Russia? Clearly, his disapproval of the controversial 2018 World Cup bid was not appreciated by Putin and his colleagues. Putin is very supportive of Sepp Blatter, FIFA and all too thrilled to have out bid England for the honor of hosting the World Cup.
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