US Attorney Dropped FIFA Bribery Case at Trump Official’s Behest

The Justice Department’s solicitor general effectively ordered Brooklyn prosecutors to abandon two FIFA bribery convictions amid pushback from their Trump-appointed US attorney—potentially unraveling dozens of other international soccer corruption cases and hundreds of millions of dollars in recovered penalties.

John Sauer, DOJ’s top Supreme Court litigator, recently relayed to Eastern District of New York chief prosecutor Joseph Nocella that he must ask a judge to overturn guilty verdicts of the former chief executive officer of Fox International Channels and an Argentine marketing company that were unanimously upheld by a federal appellate panel in July, said three people familiar with the situation.

Nocella reached out to Sauer to urge him to reconsider and not drop the case, according to a person briefed on the matter, who asked not to be identified because the communications were private.

Some government lawyers worried that ending the case could result in overturning convictions of dozens of other soccer officials and sports marketing executives, as well as the return of hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and penalties, said the person. There was also concern that the government was walking away from a federal appeals court decision that affirmed the government’s ability to prosecute bribery cases.

But Sauer, who was previously President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, wasn’t swayed, informing others he was certain he’d lose the case before a high court that’s been progressively weakening public corruption statutes, added the individuals, who spoke anonymously about internal deliberations.

Nocella’s office wasn’t given the opportunity for a meeting to present their arguments to continue the case, said the person briefed on the matter.

A DOJ spokesperson and a spokesman for Nocella declined to comment.

Although the justices had yet to determine whether to review the case, Nocella followed Sauer’s directive, signing a Dec. 9 motion requesting the district court dismiss the indictments with prejudice “in the interests of justice.” Sauer filed a brief to the Supreme Court the same evening, echoing Nocella by calling the government’s decision an exercise of “prosecutorial discretion.”

It’s standard for a solicitor general, DOJ’s fourth-ranked official often dubbed the 10th justice, to prevail in disputes over cases the Supreme Court may hear.

But attorneys said the about-face at such an advanced stage last week surprised them. Some noted that dismissing cases against Hernan Lopez and Full Play Group, if approved by the judge, would void the government’s July court victory that was expected to bolster corruption prosecutions.

“If the solicitor general’s considered view is that it can’t defend the theory of prosecution, that should have a meaningful effect on the entire Department of Justice’s view of the law,” said Justin Weddle, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor. Weddle now represents a former Central American soccer president who pleaded guilty in 2016 for wire fraud and racketeering conspiracies.

“It should mean that these convictions shouldn’t stand for other defendants convicted on that same theory,” he said.

Weddle’s client, Alfredo Hawit, is already released from prison, but he’s among numerous FIFA scandal defendants likely to cite DOJ’s reversed course for Lopez to request the government return millions from accepted bribes that they’ve forfeited over the past decade.

Lawyers for a handful of those other defendants said they’re awaiting Supreme Court action on Sauer’s request to redirect the case to the trial court for approval of the dismissals. At that point, they said they’ll raise arguments for comparable lenience.

Two of those defense lawyers said Brooklyn prosecutors told them the motion to dismiss was directed from DC and was outside the US attorney’s office control.

A career solicitor general’s office deputy expressed concerns about allowing Brooklyn prosecutors to appeal the case in 2023, but that deputy was overruled by the Joe Biden-era solicitor general who supported the convictions, said a government source familiar with the matter.

‘Unequal Treatment’

The FIFA investigation, announced in 2015 by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, exposed decades of corruption in international soccer. It resulted in criminal charges against more than 50 defendants in 20 countries, guilty pleas by more than 30 people and companies, and the trial convictions of three people and one corporation.

Lopez, the former Fox International Channels executive, was convicted in 2023 of a scheme to pay millions of dollars in bribes to get lucrative broadcast rights to soccer matches, including confidential bidding information for the rights to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments in the US, which Fox successfully obtained. Full Play Group SA, a South American sports marketing company, was also convicted at the trial.

21st Century Fox Inc., the parent company of Fox International Channels, was not charged in the bribery scandal and denied any wrongdoing.

Later in 2023, US District Judge Pamela Chen in Brooklyn overturned the verdicts based on the high court’s May 2023 opinion setting aside the honest services wire fraud conviction of an aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). The honest services doctrine has been commonly applied to public and private sector bribery or kickback schemes that defraud others.

Although the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit backed prosecutors in restoring the convictions in July, DOJ leadership wasn’t willing to risk the justices granting review and handing down an adverse ruling.

‘Ill-Conceived Case’

Lopez is represented by Debevoise’s John Gleeson, the prominent former Brooklyn mob prosecutor and federal judge. Gleeson didn’t respond when asked if his firm had sought the Trump administration’s intervention. On Dec 16, he told the Supreme Court the “ill-conceived” case against Lopez should be dropped.

A lawyer for Full Play declined to comment, and FIFA didn’t respond to a request.

In a statement on LinkedIn after the decision, Lopez called the prosecution “baseless” and said the decision to drop the case was “extraordinary.”

The solicitor general’s pivot comes as the president and his DOJ leaders have issued pardons and dismissals to multiple white-collar defendants with political connections. It also came days after FIFA awarded Trump a peace prize.