Is Fifa breaking any laws?

[jpoma]

So let's assume all the corruption allegations are true, and Fifa admits to it. Are they doing anything legally wrong? And under what jurisdiction?

[Admin]

They are covered under the 'jurisdiction' of people who are willing to do things like this just to kill one judge. (Giuseppe Falcone in this case)

[Rivaldo]

It's Switzerland's jurisdiction and they are investigating.

socceronly, do you mean Giovanni Falcone? The guys who did that are more likely to be buddies with Blatter et al.

[jpg75]

As the BBC Panorama episode mentioned Swiss law has been changed and it is now illegal to receive business related bribes (this was not the case back in the '90's when Leoz, Teixera etc. accepted ISL kickbacks).

[Soro17]

FIFA may or may not have broken laws. But, it is a near certainty that the parties providing the alleged payments/benefits (i.e. the bid teams) and the individuals receiving the bribes (i.e. the members of the executive committee) likely did. Most of the executive committee members are also public officials of one sort of another. Many of the countries involved have ratified the Convention on Combatting Bribery of Foreign Public Officials and the UN Convention on Corruption which (through local legislation) make it an offence to provide a benefit to a public official in order to induce acts or decisions of a foreign state (or a representative thereof). Bribes also usually involve breaches of money-laundering and tax evasion laws.