The Daily - The World Cup’s Mysterious Path to Russia

Episode Date: June 22, 2018

The 2018 World Cup is now underway in Russia. The story of how it ended up there involves some names you might recognize: James Comey, Robert Mueller and Christopher Steele. Guest: Ken Bensinger, author of “Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World’s Biggest Sports Scandal,” who has written about this story for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the 2018 World Cup is now underway in Russia. The story of how it came to be there is more relevant than you might think. It's Friday, June 22nd. The fight for the right to host football's World Cup entered its final stage with candidate countries making their last presentations.

Now, big names have been arriving here in Zurich and the media had their stakeouts in front of hotels where the important people are staying. It was a cold, snowy morning in Zurich, Switzerland, where the headquarters of FIFA, the body that oversees world soccer, is based. The first FIFA representatives arrived in Zurich, the ultimate decision makers for which country hosts the World Cup. A fleet of sleek black Mercedes sedans drove into the bowels of the headquarters of FIFA,

where 22 men who control world soccer were marched into a room to make an important decision where the 2018 World Cup would be held. Ken Bensinger wrote about this story for The Times. There was a clear favorite. Everyone knew that England, which was desperate to hold the World Cup, was the clear favorite. England favorite to host the World Cup in 2018. David Beckham has been at the forefront of lobbying for the votes of the 22 FIFA committee members. They had everything in their favor. They had stadiums and infrastructure and airports and hotels.

The world's greatest soccer tradition. This was the country that had invented the sport after all. It was clear England was going to win. One of the ways, I think, to sell it to the world is the world watches English football. Actually, the world comes and plays its football in England. And so bringing the World Cup to England is such a natural step. So England is the clear favorite. Is there anybody else in contention?

Yeah, there's several other contenders. There's a bid between Portugal and Spain. There's one between Holland and Belgium. And there's another one, which no one thinks has any chance at all, Russia. And why does no one think that Russia has a chance? FIFA itself rated Russia's bid the worst of all the bids for 2018 with the worst infrastructure and the most problems. Russia didn't have good soccer at the time,

so no one took them at that point in time seriously as a soccer nation. But how seriously was Russia taking its bid? At first, it seemed like they weren't taking it at all. They were barely making deadlines for filing their different paperwork they needed to turn in. But it started to become apparent as time marched toward that December vote that Russia might be taking it a heck of a lot more seriously than people thought. thought. Soccer is popular. It's very popular all over the world, especially in Russia. And here is a story to prove it. I was born in Leningrad. And as you know, during World War II, Я народився в Ленінграді. І, як ви знаєте, під час свого свого свого свого, Ленінград пройшов 900 днів блокад. Немає електрики, немає руху води, немає їжі і немає хіду в російській вітрі.

Але футбол-матчі були зберігані навіть в цей трагічний час. Football matches were held even at that tragic time. Football brings spark into the lives of people, young and old. By the time of the vote in FIFA, Vladimir Putin had applied himself full-time to the bid, even appearing in a video making a final plea to FIFA to choose Russia. So why do we think that Putin suddenly cares about the World Cup now? So remember, this is 2010. This is a time when Russia is trying really hard

to change its relationship with the rest of the world. This is the time of the famous reset. There is no event in the world that draws more eyeballs than the World Cup. There's no opportunity for a leader sitting in a presidential box at the opening game to get more attention than to be in the World Cup. Warm welcome to you, live from our headquarters here in central Moscow.

This is RT with me, Anissa Naoui. It's 2 p.m. here in the Russian capital, 12 noon in Zurich, where in four hours' time, football's governing body will make arguably the biggest decision in sport. FIFA will choose the host for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which for the winners, will spark a decade of multi-billion dollar investment. So going into this vote in Zurich, England is the obvious choice. Russia is a long shot. What do we know about what happens in this underground bunker when it's time to vote? The thing about this underground bunker is no one's supposed to know what happens down there. It's one of the most secret places. It's the beating heart of FIFA.

It's multiple stories underground. It's protected in such a way that no cell phone signals can penetrate this room. The walls are made of a polished metal material that gives a dull sheen over the entire room.

Overhead is a giant chandelier above a big square table that looks like something out of Dr. Strangelove, like the war room. Adjoining this is a prayer room made out of glowing, internally lit alabaster. These 22 members filed into this room that day. The door was closed, and not a peep was heard from them about what was happening in the vote. And this is the public notary of the city of Zurich. He gives me the envelope.

Ladies and gentlemen... After the vote, everyone repairs to a different place where the press corps and many other people are waiting to hear the envelope. Ladies and gentlemen... After the vote, everyone repairs to a different place where the press corps and many other people are waiting to hear the result. The president of FIFA at the time stands in front of the podium,

pulls open the envelope, and has his big reveal. 2018 FIFA World Cup. 2018 FIFA World Cup. Ladies and gentlemen, will be organized in Russia. Russia. So England does not win.

No. In fact, when the dust settles, England found out it only got two votes out of the whole thing and they were the first country eliminated. So it turns out

they really didn't stand a chance. Never had a chance. Terrible. Gutted. Absolutely gutted. I thought we were robbed. I thought, logistically, England is much better, much better bid than Russia. The stadiums and the training facilities we have, we don't have a long way to go for seven and a half years.

Russia has got a hell of a long way to go. I thought I was going to cry. You thought you were going to win it? Yeah, I did, actually. Sorry, I didn't know why I'm upset. It's annoying. So what's actually going on here? How it is that Russia managed to beat out England and everyone else

at first seemed like a mystery. No one could understand it. But there was at least one person who had a pretty good idea of what had happened. That man was a retired British spy living in London by the name of Christopher Steele. The Christopher Steele? Yes, the Christopher Steele.

The Christopher Steele who wrote the dossier making a series of allegations against Donald Trump involving his behavior in Russia. That's correct, the same one. This is the Christopher Steele who was a spy for England for many years and had contacts throughout Russia and knew perhaps as much as anybody about what was happening behind closed doors inside Russia.

And how exactly does this Christopher Steele get involved in looking into FIFA and the World Cup and Russia winning the 2018 game? When Christopher Steele stopped being a spy for Britain, he opened a corporate intelligence firm called Orbis. One of his first clients at Orbis was the English bid to win the 2018 World Cup. They hired him because of his expertise on Russia to provide them intelligence on what the Russian bid was up to. To essentially investigate rivals to England, try to better understand their pitches and their bids. Think of it as an insurance policy for their bid. They are trying to find out as much information as they can about everybody else because they think it'll help their chances of winning. And what does Christopher Steele find out as he's researching these other bids and what's happened? Well, Christopher Steele finds

out in the spring of 2010, well before the vote, funny things are starting to happen with the bid. And his sources in Russia and elsewhere in the world are telling him that they're noticing untoward behavior on the behalf of Russia. Like what? There's allegations that FIFA voters are being bribed with paintings that potentially could have been taken from the Hermitage. Museum-quality paintings?

Allegedly, yes. Including one allegation, which has never been proved, that a Picasso might have been given to one of the FIFA voters. Yeah. And what else? There was a rumor of a vote-swapping deal involving Qatar and a gas pipeline that they wanted to construct, where top allies of Vladimir Putin were meeting with Qatari people to see about making a gas deal that seemed to be a mask for maybe a vote trade.

And then there was the involvement of an oligarch very close to Vladimir Putin by the name of Roman Abramovich, who is famous in soccer circles because he owns Chelsea, the very famous soccer club in London. Abramovich was a figure who, in general, stayed out of the public eye, didn't get involved in anything.

And yet suddenly he became very active in supporting the Russian bid. So essentially, Steele's research suggests that Russia has been more or less systematically trying to bribe and manipulate the FIFA officials who are going to vote on who to give the World Cup to. That's right. Yeah. We'll be right back. Okay, so Christopher Steele compiles all these allegations, all these bits of information about how Russia seems to be bribing FIFA officials.

And what does he do with it? He does two things. First, he tells his client, the English bid, that they're up against a much fiercer foe than they might have anticipated. But then he does something else, something a bit unexpected. He calls a new friend he has who lives in New York, who happens to be an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He invites this agent, who is a specialist in Russian organized crime, to come to London and meet with him because he's got an important tip for him. And that's when he

tells this man that FIFA is worth looking into and that Russia appears to be up to no good. And why would this be of interest to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States? This seemingly has nothing to do with the FBI. That's a good question. The FBI at that time was very interested in what he called transnational crime. It was interested in different kinds of crime that crossed borders. This was an initiative under the director at the time, a man by the name of Robert Mueller.

Mueller wanted agents to look for cases that involved money laundering and movements of money across the borders. And this seemed a lot like an opportunity to do that. Since Christopher Steele knew that the FBI was looking for those kind of cases, and particularly that agent, when he got this information about FIFA, he thought it might fall into their wheelhouse. So Steele has given this information to his employer, the British government, and gives it to this FBI agent. What happens after that? Something you wouldn't expect necessarily.

The English, who you would think would be the most interested in finding out that Russia was up to no good, apparently do nothing. Mainly, it seems, because they're so scared of offending the people in FIFA who are going to vote that they don't want to say a word for fear of ruffling feathers.

The FBI agent, who had a background busting the Italian mafia in Brooklyn, doesn't really know anything about FIFA, is not interested in soccer, but he knows a good case when he smells one. So he finds a prosecutor in a federal court in Brooklyn and convinces him to open a case. And roughly around late summer of 2010 is when the criminal case against FIFA secretly begins. against FIFA, secretly begins. It turns out it's really hard to make a case against international soccer bandits. The U.S. investigation of soccer corruption

labored on for over a year without a significant break. It wasn't until late 2011 when they finally were able to make a major step forward by flipping one of the 22 men who was in that room. In the bunker. That's right. And how does it flip him? This was the only American in the room,

a guy by the name of Chuck Blazer, who, coincidence or not, lived in the Trump Tower. Chuck Blazer had skimmed millions of dollars from the game over the years and had huge income, but he had a nervous tick of never filing tax returns or paying taxes. And when the Internal Revenue Service, which had joined the case, became aware of this, they saw golden opportunity. And in late November 2011, the FBI and the IRS approached Chuck Blazer and told him he had a choice,

either go to jail or cooperate with the U.S. investigation. And Blazer immediately signed on. When Blazer flips and becomes a cooperator, they put him to work. They make him wear a wire, they make him make phone calls, they make him travel to different places. And he also provides him a tremendous amount of information about how FIFA operates. He told them that World Cup votes in that bunker were very frequently marred by bribery. He admitted himself to taking bribes for the allocation of the 2010 World Cup, which was held in South Africa. He made it clear to them that bribery was the rule of the day within FIFA. And so armed with this information from Blazer, these wiretaps, these confessions, where does this investigation go? This investigation was conducted in total secrecy and no one knew anything about it. But

the DOJ with the IRS and the FBI were secretly rolling up one informant after another and building what turned out to be an enormously aggressive and ambitious case. That case finally bust into worldview on May 27, 2015. It has been a dramatic day in Switzerland. And after the arrest of high-ranking officials from the headquarters of World Football, the fallout is spreading across the world. The fastest growing sport in America got a swift kick today. Several top officials of soccer's world governing body were arrested in a massive bribery scandal. Top FIFA officials arrested by police in a dawn raid in Zurich.

They face extradition to the United States where they're wanted for questioning about kickbacks involving $100 million. And what are they arrested for? They're arrested for wire fraud, for money laundering, and particularly for racketeering. Including an official alleged to have taken more than $10 million in bribes. U.S. prosecutors say brief cases full of cash decided media and marketing rights, even the site of the World Cup. They were being charged by the Department of Justice with being members of a criminal conspiracy.

And the Department of Justice was describing FIFA as essentially a mafia organization. Now, for today's announcement, I'm honored to be joined today by Director James Comey of the FBI. Within hours, Jim Comey, the FBI director, and Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, held a press conference in Brooklyn where they announced to the world that they had undertaken this massive investigation focused at the very heart of FIFA. It's an honor to join the attorney general and the U.S. attorney to announce this important case. Soccer, football, is an egalitarian sport. It is the beautiful game because the pitch is flat. It is available to anyone and everyone, no matter where you come from, rich or poor, boy or girl, you can enjoy the beautiful game. The game, according to the

allegations in this indictment, was hijacked. That field that is so famously flat was made tilted in favor of those who were looking to gain at the expense of countries and kids who are enjoying the game of soccer. This is not the way things should be. And the work will continue until all of the corruption is uncovered and a message is sent around the world that this conduct will not be tolerated. I wonder if it had to be the United States that did this, that investigated this case and made these arrests. Because our country's relationship to soccer is so different from the rest of the world and so much thinner. Did it take an outsider to treat FIFA as criminals? I think you've put your finger on it.

Every other country in the world cares too much about soccer to ever do anything. In fact, the history of investigations in other countries of FIFA and of soccer corruption is incredibly minimal. In the end, the U.S. could do it because there is no political pressure on agents who want to build a case against soccer. They could operate with a lot of freedom in a way that I think would have been impossible in almost any other country in the world. Reminds me of the fact that England lost its bid in part because of this and did nothing. That's right, they did nothing. And in fact, they even tried to prevent journalists from publishing reports that would show FIFA corruption

in the days leading up to the vote in December 2010. So a lot of these countries are just accepting the corruption in FIFA. That's right, they considered it a cost of doing business with the most popular sport in the world. And I guess from their perspective, FIFA officials are gods. They're sort of a higher order of being who are to be treated with the highest level of respect and white glove service and whatever they want, they're supposed to get. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

First of all, I would like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, each bit is very special and significant. Each bit is a challenge. And we are honored to win in this tough and fair fight. So all these high-level FIFA officials are ensnared in this corruption investigation. They are arrested. They're paying a cost. But I don't think I heard you mention any consequences for Russia. As far as we know, there have been no consequences for Russia.

The U.S. criminal action has never mentioned Russia. It's a mystery what happened there. FIFA, for its part, opened an investigation of Russia. But when it went to Russia and asked them for their computers so they could review them, they were told that the computers had been destroyed and there was no evidence whatsoever. Just happened to have been destroyed. Just happened to have been destroyed. There was no records anymore of their bid. Они были сказаны, что компьютеры были уничтожены, и нет никаких доказательств. Они просто уничтожены? Они просто уничтожены. У них нет никаких рекордов.

Приветствую поклонников футбола и лучшие футбольные сборные планеты. Добро пожаловать на чемпионат мира FIFA. Welcome to Russia. И сейчас мы в центре Мирной Кубки в России. Welcome to Russia. Now, we're in the middle of the World Cup in Russia. And for the opening match, Vladimir Putin sat right next to the new president of FIFA, and they watched the game together. The focus switches to Russia for the 21st edition of the FIFA World Cup and the opening match between the host nation and Saudi Arabia.

So not only is Russia unscathed, it keeps the games. It keeps the games. And Vladimir Putin gets the worldwide party he'd wanted all along. Back in again, free hitter! And Russia score the opening goal of the World Cup. It's Kaczynski who rises highest. And a better start the host nation couldn't have wished for. 11 minutes gone in the Luzhniki Stadium.

So what happens to Christopher Steele? That explains why we hear about him a couple of years later in a very different but seemingly related context. but seemingly related context. So Christopher Steele, after establishing a relationship with this FBI agent, watches the investigation from afar and keeps in touch with this person he's met in the FBI. And in 2016, Christopher Steele is hired to do research on Russia once again. But this time is to look into whether there's connections between the

Kremlin and Donald Trump. Once again, what he finds disturbs him. He picks up the phone and he calls that same FBI agent once again. And he has a new story to tell him. He invites that FBI agent to meet him and he hands over a new investigation. And this one is a 35-page document detailing what he considers to be collusion between Russia and Trump to undermine American democracy. Ken, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael, for having me. Here's what else you need to know today. These are hard issues.

But these issues will ultimately get solved in this country. You know why? Because they have to get solved in this country. It's broken. Our immigration system's broken. We have a lot of problems that are broken. One day after President Trump ended the separation of children and their parents at the border and urged Congress to act on the issue, House Speaker Paul Ryan postponed a vote on a bill that would do just that

after failing to win enough Republican votes. We need two to tango. We have 51 votes in the Senate. We need 60, unfortunately, because we have the ridiculous filibuster rule. So we need 60. President Trump had personally lobbied for the House bill, which would have also provided a path to citizenship for DREAMers, but sent lawmakers mixed messages on Thursday morning by declaring that the Senate would likely

reject the House bill, which in turn discouraged House Republicans from taking a risky vote. And I think we'll get six senators, maybe we'll get seven senators. That still doesn't get us to 60, so there's nothing you can do to get there. As the president was speaking, Thank you so much for having me here today. First Lady Melania Trump made an unannounced visit to a Texas detention center that

houses children separated from their parents under her husband's zero-tolerance policy. And I'd also like to ask you how I can help to these children to reunite with their families as quickly as possible. During her visit, the First Lady asked the staff about how children are treated at such

facilities. And those children, how many times they speak with their relatives or families per week, for example? Well, the children are allowed to communicate with their family twice a week. They get a 10-minute phone call. But first, we have to ensure that the persons that they're contacting, their families, are indeed their families. The Daily is produced by Theo Balcom, Lindsay Garrison, Rachel Quester, Annie Brown, Andy Mills, Ike Streets-Conneracha, Claire Tennesketter, Paige Cowan, Michael Simon-Johnson, and Jessica Chung,

with editing help from Larissa Anderson. Lisa Tobin is our executive producer. Samantha Hennig is our editorial director. Our technical manager is Brad Fisher. Our engineer is Chris Wood. Lisa Tobin is our executive producer. Samantha Hennig is our editorial director. Our technical manager is Brad Fisher. Our engineer is Chris Wood. And our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolmick, Michaela Bouchard, David Krakals, Lee Mangistu, and Stella Tan. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. A reminder that tomorrow we'll bring you the final chapter of our series, Caliphate, right here on The Daily. See you Monday.