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            FIFA Case Shows the Long Arm of US Foreign Bribery Laws

   by Ramon Taylor, Celia Mendoza

   The FIFA indictments of 2015 and the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee
   scandal of 1998 share an important characteristic: both were the
   targets of a corruption investigation by the U.S. Department of
   Justice.

   The FIFA indictments triggered cries of outrage against the U.S.
   Justice Department from some quarters for overstepping its bounds.

   But for U.S. legal scholars, an indictment boils down to two
   questions:  Was a crime committed on U.S. soil?  Secondly, is there a
   basis for personal jurisdiction over the individual or individuals
   involved?

   "It's not unlike someone who stands on U.S. soil and intentionally
   fires a weapon to murder someone in a foreign country and succeeds.
   It's true that the dead body is in the foreign country, but the act
   that was the crime, and the intent, all happened in the U.S. The crime
   happened here," explained Jennifer Arlen, a New York University law
   professor.

   Arlen said this type of case, involving bribes paid through U.S.
   financial institutions, is not uncharted territory for the United
   States. She said the Justice Department has aggressively pursued both
   foreign and domestic bribery for more than a decade -- including the
   Salt Lake City Olympic Committee scandal of 1998, involving bribes for
   the rights to host the 2002 Winter Games.

   Alexandra Wrage, an expert in anti-corruption compliance, was a member
   of FIFA's Independent Governance Committee until she resigned in 2013.
   She told VOA she believes a culture of bribes and kickbacks has
   persisted at FIFA for so long in part because it was seen as the normal
   way of doing business.

   "When you have this closed circle, with no independent oversight, no
   independent board members like corporations and others have now, I
   think it's really easy to have this mentality that's it's going to be
   business as usual, and that's been going on for a long time at FIFA,"
   said Wrage.

   Wrage said that if FIFA truly wanted to reform itself, it would have
   done so by now.

   "What happens instead is that Blatter talks about reform at intervals
   whenever the pressure builds and it fades back again into the
   background," said Wrage.

   Sepp Blatter, who has served as FIFA's president since 1998, remains
   under investigation.  He has agreed to step down once a successor is
   named, but continues to maintain his innocence.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/how-us-foreign-bribery-laws-can-charg
   e-fifa/2853103.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/how-us-foreign-bribery-laws-can-charge-fifa/2853103.html