welcome back. the attorney general has officially launched an investigation against fifa president seth bladder. the swiss are examining a contract signed by with the caribbean football union and an alleged payment of $2 million to the head of the european football body uefa. alex thomas has the latest. the net is closing in on blatter who has not reached the tipping point. again, wants to stand in the next one scheduled for february. a statement an saturday appealed not to fans in the media but to the men on the executive commit eye. anyone on that committee, will they have the courage to oust him? after 40 years here at fifa and 18 years almost as president.
happens to blatter? he s the guy at the center of this. can he quarantine himself from this investigation? that s what he s done for a long time. we reported a few weeks ago that he had decided it would be unwise to set foot on u.s. soil. and he s said, well, maybe i ll come to the united states next year, when perhaps the statute of limitations might have expired on some of the charges that might be brewing with this investigation. he attended seven gold cup finals in a row in the united states after being elected president of fifa in 1998. he skipped in 2013 after the federal investigation started, and he s said that he s going to skip this year. that being said, he s done a very good job over the years of not being caught with his hand
with this corruption. this was the headline of the new york times today. fifa officials arrested on corruption charges, seth bladder isn t among them. it had to be made clear. the surprise to me is two things, the first is that fifa, any multibillion dollar global corporation is being held to account for their corruption. that in and of itself is a shocker, something that drops the jaw. the second part i think we need to look at is that they were able to keep this so secret and do this in a way that even leading members of fifa said, that they thought this year s fifa congress would be boring or even more boring than usual. and yet the united states was able to pull off a transatlantic sting involving swiss authorities, using anti-terror statutes given to the justice department after 9/11 to go after fifa, i mean, this isn t just a crazy story. i mean, this is a movie for goodness sakes.
now, is this the straw that breaks the camel s back, do they say, we re yanking the game s from qatar? i think it s a fair question. if you asked me last flight at this time, i would have said 100%, 2022 is going on in qatar, as sepp blatter has vowed repeatedly. he s said words to the effect, over my dead body is 2022 going to be anywhere but qatar, i think the landscape has shifted a little bit, certainly in the last 24 hours, and there might be a stronger movement ato the to actually have a revote. certainly there are provisions within fifa s charter that would justify a revote. whether the pressure becomes something that sepp blatter responds to, that s an open question. jeremy schapp, thank you again, excellent work on this. a blow to president obama s immigration initiatives open up a window for one of his would be successors. rand paul attacks his party s
the qatar games, there s a lot much speculation, you saw the represent for fifa saying, i don t know fp as of now, they re going to go on in russia and qatar. you have the death toll, you have this insane unsustainable situation that you have done incredible reporting on, and there s a real question now, is this the straw that breaks the camel s back, do they say, we re yanking the game s from qatar? i think it s a fair question. if you asked me last flight at this time, i would have said 100%, 2022 is going on in qatar, as sepp blatter has vowed repeatedly. he s said words to the effect, over my dead body is 2022 going to be anywhere but qatar, i think the landscape has shifted a little bit, certainly in the last 24 hours, and there might be a stronger movement ato the to actually have a revote. certainly there are provisions within fifa s charter that would justify a revote. whether the pressure becomes something that sepp blatter responds to, that s an open question. a blow to p