Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a stunning 47-count indictment charging Fifa officials with involvement in bribery and kickbacks. Photo / AP
In November 2010, former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney-General Eric Holder travelled to Zurich to lobby football's world governing body in support of the American bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
The sport's popularity was rising in the United States, and a successful bid would bring the world's most-watched sporting event back for the first time in nearly three decades.
The Americans were not successful. Instead, Qatar - a small, wealthy emirate on the Gulf - became the first Arab country to be awarded the event. And almost immediately the decision to place a summer tournament in a country where daytime temperatures in those months often exceed 48C drew fierce criticism - and deep suspicion.
Even before Clinton and Holder had left Switzerland, there "was a lot of talk that the decision had been bought", said a person with knowledge of the private conversations among US officials in Switzerland.
Concern in 2010 about deep corruption in Fifa helped galvanise a growing investigation into the international organisation and the way the World Cup is awarded. It was launched in the US attorney's office in Brooklyn, New York, where Loretta Lynch, who this year became Holder's successor, was starting her second term as US Attorney-General.
"There's a lot of things that go into beginning an investigation," Lynch told the Washington Post, when asked about what US officials heard in Zurich.
"There had been allegations of corruption within Fifa for some time."
Lynch oversaw the investigation into Fifa for nearly five years. Investigators finalised their plans to make arrests in Switzerland in the last couple of weeks, as Lynch was beginning her tenure as the new US Attorney-General.
It was her decision to give the final go-ahead for the prosecutions and to request that Swiss police begin rounding up some of the most important men in international football.
The decision fits with a career pattern of bringing down the hammer on powerful interests who have grown corrupt in their positions.
She announced a stunning 47-count indictment charging Fifa officials with involvement in bribery and kickbacks "year after year, tournament after tournament".
While the Justice Department's case focuses on the decision to hold the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the probe continues into the awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
"The Swiss authorities are continuing an investigation of the awarding of other World Cup venues," Lynch said. "We look forward to seeing the information that their investigation ultimately reveals."
What made the complex Fifa investigation so difficult, Lynch said, was that the alleged corruption went back decades and required the collection of evidence overseas and "the analysis of literally reams and reams of records".
"Our investigation revealed that at least from the early 1990s, the defendants in question began turning their positions with the soccer organisations into their own personal piggybank," Lynch said.
"It's often very difficult to obtain contemporaneous records for things that go back that far ... You also have to make sure that memories are accurate."
With only one month on the job as the nation's top law enforcement official, Lynch has made several high-profile domestic announcements, including the investigation into police misconduct in Baltimore and a settlement this week with the city of Cleveland over policing practices. But the unsealing of the US indictments and the high-profile round-up of Fifa officials in Zurich thrust Lynch - who is known to shun the limelight - squarely on to the international stage.
The lengthy, 164-page criminal indictment of bribery, racketeering, money laundering and fraud charges against 14 international football officials and sports marketing executives "reads almost like a novel", in its clear narrative arc, Lynch said.
But at the beginning of an investigation, such as the one into Fifa, "nothing is clear", Lynch said.
"It's like peeling an onion back.
"You look at certain business arrangements and they lead you to more business arrangements between individuals, between companies.
"So you want to be careful and make sure that you aren't missing either important connections that will tell you more about the defendants already on your radar or other people who may have also been involved in this."
The alleged corruption stretched as far back as 1991 when two generations of football officials used their positions of trust within the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football and the South American Football Confederation to solicit bribes from sports marketers in exchange for the commercial rights to their football tournaments, Lynch said.
The probe involved FBI and IRS agents who had to undertake "a very, very painstaking analysis of financial records" and look for corroboration of information that involved international football officials and sports marketing executives who were entrusted "with keeping soccer open and accessible to all".
"They held important responsibilities at every level, from building soccer fields for children in developing countries to organising the World Cup," Lynch said.
"They were expected to uphold the rules that keep soccer honest and protect the integrity of the game. Instead, they corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and enrich themselves."
The 56-year-old's story is like something from a book on the American Dream. She was born in the southern state of North Carolina when segregation still divided black people from whites. Her father was a Baptist minister whose church was a rallying point for civil rights campaigners. Her late brother was a US Navy Seal.
Lynch went on to graduate from Harvard law school and rose to become the US Attorney in Eastern New York, making her one of the highest-profile federal prosecutors in the country. She prosecuted terrorists and mobsters but also corrupt politicians from both parties, police officers who abused prisoners and banks accused of fraud.
President Barack Obama nominated her for the Attorney-General's job in November, saying: "Loretta doesn't look to make headlines, she looks to make a difference".
She is the first black woman to serve as Attorney-General. She was sworn in on April 27.
What does the Attorney-General do?
The Attorney-General is America's top law enforcement officer, a member of the President's cabinet, and the head of the US Department of Justice.
The person's job is to enforce US federal law and go after those who break it.
The Attorney-General also makes sure state governments don't violate federal law.
For example, the Justice Department has often sued states such as Texas over its efforts to make it more difficult to vote.
The Attorney-General is appointed, and stays in the post until the President decides to replace them or until they decide to step down.
Why is the job controversial?
The Attorney-General's job is in theory a legal position but there is inevitably a lot of politics involved. The Justice Department is responsible for giving legal advice to the President, so when Obama controversially decided last year he was going to stop deporting millions of illegal immigrants it was on the counsel of his Attorney-General.
Eric Holder, the previous Attorney-General, was personally close to Obama (he has described himself as "the President's wingman") and had a caustic relationship with Republicans in Congress. Conservatives accused him of stonewalling them and enforcing the law in a politicised way. Republicans voted in 2012 to hold him in contempt of Congress, the first time that has happened to a cabinet secretary.
Lynch has aimed to distance herself from Holder and said she hoped for a positive relationship with Congress.
Terrorism:
Lynch supports trying terror suspects in civilian courts, rather than the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay favoured by some Republicans. She considers waterboarding to be torture and "therefore illegal".
Death penalty: Lynch has sought the death penalty as a prosecutor and has described it as an "effective penalty".
NSA surveillance: Lynch differs from many liberals on her support for the NSA's broad surveillance programme, which she said was in line with the US constitution.
Immigration: She supports the legality of Obama's decision to allow millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the US.
Marijuana: She struck a hawkish note on marijuana saying it brings "not only organised crime activity, but great levels of violence". But she also indicated that she would continue the Obama policy of allowing states to experiment with legal cannabis.
- Washington Post-Bloomberg, Telegraph Group Ltd
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