these arrests were done overnight in one of the best hotels in switzerland and europe and going into a meeting of officials who have been above the law for deckades. yes, good morning, joe, it was a very unwelcome baik wake-up call for at least six fifa officials, perhaps seven. they were expecting to wake up by their swiss lake begin the process of reelecting their president for a fifth time. fifa of course one of those powerful organizations if world sport and a vote to reelect sepp blatter, the single most powerful man in world sport soccer known as the beautiful game but today soccer is besmir wered. balls it s a scandal the fbi says spans generations and
they woke them up in the middle of the night and pulled them out of this five-star hotel. let them collect some of their things. led some out in handcuffs out the side door of the hotel. the long-time president seth blatter. he was not among those listed in the indictment. but willie the fbi has been investigating fifa for years. this guy is the target. you look at the press release. they said there is only the beginning. i ve got a feeling some people are going to start rolling pretty quickly. it s got to be shocking. you are sitting there in a five-star hotel thinking i will figure out talk to people. some of these guys made $150 million in kickback bribes money laundering. they re thinking business as usual. suddenly they re dragged out of there. plucked to the united states. thank you, switzerland, and you know seth blatter, he s a
that answer. that second thing that democrat tick which i respect. you have your ticks. i know. more freedom. they re more subtle. all right. let s go back to that breaking news we were talking about at the top of the show. everyone waking up to the international governing body the justice department announced nine fifa officials and executives were indicted on conspiracy charges in other tournaments in latin america. attorney general loretta lynch opened the investigation, the indictment reads if part it alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the united states. it spans at least two generations of soccer official, who, as alleged, have abused their positions in thousands of kickbacks. arrests were made early this morning at the five star nolte switzerland. you are looking at here. where the officials were staying ahead of the organization.
110 degrees in the shade. there are people leaving office and trying to avoid prosecution. i think he d be a fool to be reeleblgedded on friday. let s go to michael schmidt and bill neely and on the phone from zurich switzerland, we have new york times reporter michael schmid. he helped break this story. he is at the hotel where the arrests occurred. michael, you were sitting in the lobby as these arrests were going down. tell us what you saw. reporter: it was much different tan we see in the u.s. where guys storm in with guns and there is bulletproof vests and swat teams. this was about 16 swiss agents. they were in street clothes. they came in fairly quietly. they went directly to the front desk. they started talking to the clerk, finding out what rooms the folks they were looking for were in and then they sort of disappeared into the hotel. then over the next hour we saw