Ken Bensinger

Here is a good story rushed out to press a little too quickly in order to cash in on the buzz around the 2018 World Cup.

Massive corruption in the ranks of FIFA, high and low, is now well documented thanks to the perseverance of the US Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, and regional Justice Department prosecutors.

Not many people went to jail fully three years after the initial indictments, and hundreds of millions of contraband funds are stuck in litigation in New York courtrooms and the US Treasury Dept.

Ken Bensinger writes a suspenseful tale of the investigators, the crooks, and their minions. It has nice thumbnail portraits of the key participants and an interesting update on how one pursues white collar crime on an international scale.

Where it falls down, in my opinion, is context. Five million here, twenty million there. I kept asking myself: what does it all add up to?

How much was taken out of soccer? How much was put into soccer? What is global appetite for pro soccer?

How much is this replicated in other sports — on a local level, on an international level?

Who is implicated in the corporations who paid the bribes including Coca-Cola and Nike? Where are the national players? We only have rumours about how much was paid by Russians and Qataris for the World Cup.

Surely it must be known by now how much was paid out for the 2018 and 2020 World Cups.

There are also some splendid asides that are provocative and could have taken us into some interesting sidebars. For example, Bensinger drops near the end of the tale that the lead prosecutor in the story, Evan Norris, left the dept. for private practise because on his salary he couldn’t afford to live in New York. That isn’t a small story.

He superficially steps into the lives of some of his characters who began life in poverty, worked up through the ranks into pro soccer, and capped out their careers as world class thieves.

Rich and poor. In developing countries. In developed countries. It seems like there were many “willing executioners,” the countries who knew about the bribes and played along; the companies who build vast franchises on these events.

From a sanitized western perspective this corruption is shocking; but if you live in Latin America, maybe you see life a little differently. If you’re Sicilian, or Neapolitan maybe corruption is not so surprising.

I kinda wish this book wasn’t rushed to press.… (mere)

I really enjoyed this. I've read most of Andrew Jennings' books and have always been left with the understanding of widespread corruption among FIFA but I couldn't have put it into words (Bensinger is right in staying Jennings needs a good editor to go through his work). But Bensinger's book has made it all crystal clear for me.
The corruption isn't widespread so much an intrinsic aspect of FIFA as it now stands. The book was well written, the characters came to life and the entire narrative was well structured. Bensinger does a very good job of clarifying and explaining the complex nature of the corruption.
I'll recommend this to anyone who has any interest in football (or corruption!).… (mere)