Joshua Robinson

an organization that was not abiding by U.S.

business practices, that wasn't doing open tenders or anything like that for TV rights.

And there were easy payments to trace wherever they looked.

The second one was for his cats.

I think it's not a statement on how much he loves them, but how many he had.

He also could be seen around Manhattan with a parrot on his shoulder.

And he used to feed the parrot chicken, which seems quite perverse to me.

Chuck Blazer had another problem that didn't involve kitty litter or chicken for his parrot.

He had a big problem with the taxman.

He was on the hook for about $10 million to the IRS.

But instead of prosecuting him, the DOJ did the classic prosecutor move, which is flip him and try to use Chuck to get to this larger nebulous and quite otherwise difficult to penetrate question of FIFA corruption.

Yes.

What they're trying to get to is understanding this network of FIFA payments that had otherwise been quite obscure and run as a good old boys system.

Actually, it was the third thing, which was Chuck Blazer's key chain.

which he had a secret recording device in, planted by the feds.

He used to go to meetings with FIFA executives, and as he'd enter the room, the same way we've put our phones on the table, toss his keys on the table and record everything that was said in these quite candid meetings where everyone behaved with quite mind-blowing impunity.

I mean, the recordings were quite damning because they all involve various sweetheart deals for marketing rights, for broadcast rights, and actually naming people who were receiving various payments to facilitate these.

And that culminates in May 2015 with a dawn raid on the Borlach Hotel, this five-star Tony establishment right on the lake in Zurich that had always been exactly where FIFA executives stayed when they were in town.

Long before these raids, I used to hang out at the Borlaug to meet FIFA executives.

And I would sit there with like an $8 coffee on the table in the lobby and watch as each of them would roll in and out of here and come back with massive bags from every beautiful shop on the Bahnhofstrasse.