FIFA or mafia?

Allegedly corrupt officials at FIFA may have been forgiven for thinking they were safe from the long arm of the law.

How wrong they were when Swiss authorities, working on behalf of the FBI, arrested several top FIFA officials following dawn raids in Zurich.

Those facing extradition to the US include FIFA vice president Jeffrey Webb and the infamous Jack Warner.

US law allows for the extradition and prosecution of foreign nationals under a number of statutes. But it is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act 1970 (RICO), originally designed to prosecute crime syndicates like the mafia, that will be used against the FIFA execs.

US attorney general Loretta E Lynch said that a four-year FBI investigation had found 'rampant corruption' while court documents claim that the criminal activity, which affected interstate and foreign commerce, took place in part in New York's Eastern District, and totals $100m.

Noah Feldman, a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard, explained that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) will need to prove that the defendants either committed crimes within the US or that they committed crimes covered by RICO that reach beyond US territory.

The use of US law extraterritorially has been condemned by Russia's president Vladimir Putin who claimed the US investigation into FIFA was a 'clear attempt' to prevent the organisation's current president, Sepp Blatter, from being re-elected.

Somewhat surprisingly, FIFA's 'Teflon Don' is not part of the investigation - or at least not for the moment.