Opinion | Right Field: Fifa learning a valuable lesson: never mess with the US taxman
Like their fellow gangster Al Capone, the kleptocratic execs might - hopefully - be taken down in the end by the US taxman
Hell hath no fury like the IRS scorned. You do not mess with the taxman, just ask Al Capone or Chuck Blazer or even Fifa's Teflon coated president Sepp Blatter.
Capone was one of the most notorious crime bosses ever and owned the mayor of Chicago as well as most of the police force. In the end, though, the Feds brought the violent hood down on tax evasion charges; hopefully Fifa's wildly kleptocratic reign will suffer a similar fate.
You can't touch us, they scowled, we are invincible. Yeah, that's what Capone said
Blazer was the face of American soccer for over 20 years. Gregarious and relentless, he was a born salesman who rode the fledgling interest in the global game in North America to unfathomable excesses as a regional powerbroker and a member of Fifa's executive committee from 1996 to 2013.
Known as world football's "Mr Ten Percent", Blazer's credit card bill alone reached US$29 million, not to mention the condos in Manhattan's Trump Tower and daily dining at the uber-chic Elaine's. So prodigious was his consumption that Blazer was no longer able to support his bloated 180kg frame and needed a mobility scooter.
In late 2011, he was scooting his way to Elaine's when federal agents stopped him in his tracks. We can take you away in handcuffs right now or you can co-operate with us, they told him. Blazer had failed to pay taxes for over five years while spreading his "Ten Percent" around various tax shelters for some two decades.
He agreed to plead guilty to charges that included racketeering, wire fraud, income tax evasion and money laundering and quickly became informant number one.
