Joshua Robinson

Any receptacle you'd like full of cash, there were rumors that they were being circulated.

A boat, perhaps?

Well, FIFA's history with boats, as we know, is... They had stopped using boats by such time.

Yes.

So 1998 is the year that Sepp Blatter, who has now served as FIFA secretary general, which is an incredibly powerful and hands on post within the organization, runs for president.

And the moment the votes are counted, there are rumors that this was held in Paris, that the night before in the hotel, brown envelopes were being passed out with $50,000 in cash to buy votes.

This was never substantiated, and Blatter always denied any sort of wrongdoing here, but the whispers were very loud.

And from that moment on, when he wins that election in a landslide, the idea that cash is being paid under the table for everything from securing marketing deals, securing TV rights, that people are getting sweetheart arrangements for funneling certain bits of the empire towards them is never very far away.

And, I mean, the number we heard that they were throwing around to buy these endorsements from some of the biggest names in soccer was roughly $10 million.

That's probably the biggest ever U.S.

contribution to global soccer and to the World Cup.

So the DOJ began to look at two things that FIFA's business happened to do that made it eligible for such close scrutiny.

One was it did a lot of its business in dollars, which gives the DOJ very, very long reach and plenty of latitude to poke its nose wherever it likes.

And two, because so much of this corruption was located in the space of TV rights, particularly with South America, that brought in

every South American TV executive's favorite South American country, Miami.

Technically part of the country of Florida.

But what happened is that everyone had bank accounts in Miami and New York as well.

Everyone was having these meetings.

All of these deals were being done with U.S.-based middlemen.

And so that gave the DOJ exactly what it needed to look into FIFA as a potentially corrupt organization