The FBI is examining documents charting more than $500,000 in payments made by a Caribbean soccer group to a top US official of the sport that has been shaken internationally by corruption allegations. According to a US law enforcement officer, a New York-based FBI squad assigned to investigate “Eurasian organized crime” is examining evidence related to payments made to Chuck Blazer, US member of the executive committee of FIFA, the Zurich-based governing body of soccer. Blazer is also general secretary of CONCACAF, the sport's governing body in North and Central America and the Caribbean. He has recently sparked controversy by accusing two other top international soccer officials of corruption. The US law enforcement official would not describe the time frame or extent of the FBI inquiry. But the official said the probe related to documents whose existence was initially reported by the Independent newspaper of London last weekend and on the www.transparencyinsport.org website by British journalist Andrew Jennings, who specializes in investigating alleged corruption in international sports. In an e-mail to Reuters, Blazer denounced Jennings' story as “replete with errors” and said the journalist had a “clear agenda.” But Blazer did not deny receiving three offshore payments, totalling more than $500,000. Instead, Blazer insisted that “all of my transactions have been conducted legally.” According to the documents, reviewed by Reuters, three payments were made to offshore accounts maintained by Blazer over the last 15 years. In a letter dated Jan. 29, 1996, Jack Warner, president of the Caribbean Football Union, and until recently president of CONCACAF and vice president of FIFA, instructs the vice president of a bank to wire transfer $57,750 to an account at Barclays Bank in the Cayman Islands maintained by a company called Sportvertising Ltd. The letter says that if any problems arise with the transfer, the bank should contact Blazer at CONCACAF's New York office. In e-mails to Reuters, Blazer said he had not been contacted by the FBI or notified by them of any investigation. He said two most recent payments to his company's Caymans accounts were in his view meant to be repayments to him by Warner of “a significant amount of money” that Blazer says he loaned to Warner in 2004. Blazer said that as soon as he saw the most recent payment — in the form of a check from the Caribbean Football Union — he “immediately objected”. He also said Warner, once his close ally in tense and tangled internal FIFA politicking, now is “attempting to attack me for having disclosed his unlawful conduct.” Warner did not respond to a query e-mailed to the Trinidad-based office of the Caribbean Football Union. __
