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What do FIFA indictments mean for Canada, with Warner and Traffic under fire?

FIFA accused, Jack Warner, lashes out at U.S.

The FIFA corruption arrests Wednesday and the subsequent 164-page indictments (entire version available here) didn't directly involve Canada, but their effects will be felt throughout Canadian soccer. To begin with, this casts a bit of a pall over the approaching Women's World Cup, to be held in Canada starting June 6. These arrests also motivated Canadian Soccer Association president Victor Montagliani to announce that he wouldn't support FIFA president Sepp Blatter's bid for a fifth term Friday. He instead chose to vote for challenger Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein of Jordan. Despite the U.S., Europe and much of South America also voting for Prince Ali, though, Blatter still won the election handily.

There are still effects from those indictments despite Blatter's win, however. Many of those indictments involved CONCACAF, the regional North American and Caribbean association that Canada's a member of. Following the "provisional dismissal" of CONCACAF president Jeffrey Webb (who's among the indicted), Montagliani has been appointed to a new special committee to "evaluate and sustain" CONCACAF's business operations. So, at the very least, the CSA took more of a stand against Blatter than they ever have this week. They also gained more influence within CONCACAF as a result of these allegations.

While the CSA hasn't figured in the corruption scandal yet, though, its previous close ties to former CONCACAF president Jack Warner (also a former FIFA vice-president) and the Traffic Sports marketing company at the centre of many of the bribes may raise some questions about what Canada was doing while all of this was going on. Did CSA officials know about any of this? And what exactly happened in their relationships with the indicted individuals?

On the face of it, the indictments we've seen so far are good news for Canada. There are plenty of specific bribery allegations about CONCACAF tournaments (including the Gold Cup and the CONCACAF Champions League) and CONCACAF national teams, but there's nothing in there that specifically references any of the major tournaments held in Canada over the years, such as the 2002 FIFA U-19 Women's World Championship, the 2007 U-20 World Cup or the upcoming Women's World Cup. No Canadian officials also appear to be listed by name, and the details included about unnamed "co-conspirators" don't seem to point at any Canadians. However, it's well worth considering just how close Canada was to many of the key figures in this indictment (and many of the figures listed in the numerous other accounts of FIFA corruption that have emerged over the years, such as Andrew Jennings' excellent 2006 book Foul!). Those figures have been accused of taking bribes for most of the other deals that they supported, so was their public support for Canada really altruistic, or was there something more sinister at play?

Consider Warner, one of the central indicted figures (although his native Trinidad and Tobago has already released him on bail and he's been out partying). Warner was an incredibly powerful former FIFA vice president before he resigned following a bribery scandal ahead of the last FIFA presidential election in 2011. That scandal involved Qatar's Mohammed bin Hammam challenging for the presidency and attempting to win votes in CONCACAF by bribing voters; Warner initially set up a meeting for Hammam with all of CONCACAF, but a visa issue resulted in him shifting it to only the Caribbean countries. The indictments report Warner arranged to hand the head of each Caribbean delegation  $40,000 in a brown paper envelope during that process. We don't know for sure that Warner would have attempted to bribe the North American countries the same way if the bin Hammam meeting had gone through as initially planned, and we certainly don't know what the results of that would have been, but it's notable that Canada wasn't far removed from that particular allegation.

Warner's ties to Canada deserve further discussion, as he was involved in the decision to give Canada the 2007 U-20 World Cup. Neil Davidson of The Canadian Press wrote this week that former CSA COO Kevan Pipe gave Warner a lot of credit for that tournament in a 2007 interview:

'None of this would have happened without the complete, committed support of Jack Warner, who really went — in my estimation — above and beyond in his support for Canada to get this thing done," Pipe said in a 2007 interview. ''It all boiled down to if we didn't build this stadium, this championship wouldn't have come. And none of this would have occurred without the political support that we had from Day 1 from Jack Warner.''

Does that mean there was corruption around the U-20 World Cup? Not necessarily; there's been no proof of that yet. Warner has been involved in a lot of scandals over the years, though, from diverting Trinidad and Tobago's 2006 World Cup ticket allotment to his family (as detailed in Foul!) to the numerous bribes and kickbacks the indictments allege he received. It's possible Warner's remarkable support for Canada (a country he'd previously blasted in the press thanks to Canadian broadcasters' comments) came without any financial impropriety, but the heavy involvement of a guy who seemed to take money for everything else he did certainly raises questions.

Those questions perhaps become elevated further when that tournament's considered as a whole. It set an attendance record, pulling in 1,195,299 fans, but there were plenty of reports afterwards that it had lost substantial money. The official financial report on the tournament appears to deny that, but it's a very brief report without a lot of specifics. Keep in mind that the 2007 tournament was under the old CSA's governance structure, too, which was so problematic that it eventually led to "Sack the CSA" protests and 2011 reforms. There's no proof anything went wrong there at this point in time, but these indictments may have people examining that tournament more closely, especially given Warner's involvement.

Some of the other CSA ties that need to be investigated are to Traffic Sports. Traffic is a massive Brazilian company involved in soccer in a variety of ways, including purchasing and selling media rights, and they're named throughout the indictments. They have numerous Canadian connections, particularly with the plan discussed last summer for an all-Canadian division of the NASL, a league with two current Canadian teams in Edmonton and Ottawa, plus close ties to Traffic. Until the indictments dropped, the NASL had Traffic Sports USA executive Aaron Davidson (one of the people indicted, who's accused of providing substantial bribes to numerous soccer officials) as the chairman of their board of directors. Davidson has since pled not guilty, but he's been banned from FIFA and the NASL. He was heavily involved with a lot of efforts in Canada; in fact, the CSA had a marketing arrangement with Traffic Sports as recently as last summer. Traffic Sports' name has been turned to mud by these indictments, and if the CSA wants to avoid being covered in that mud itself, it should offer a clear picture of its dealings with Davidson and the company.

As mentioned above, there's nothing in these indictments that directly reflects on Canada, and that's good news for the CSA. It's certainly possible they did nothing wrong, and that they'll in fact benefit from an enhanced role in CONCACAF in the wake of these scandals. However, so much of the alleged wrongdoing here happened in Canada's federation and with people the CSA worked closely with, such as Warner and Davidson (plus the rest of Traffic Sports). At the very least, that should spark further investigations of the CSA's dealings with those individuals and companies. Even if Canadian officials never were directly involved in FIFA corruption, there are questions about how much they knew about others' corruption and what, if anything, they did to report it. Canada appears clear for the moment, and perhaps that will remain the case. There are a lot of questions still to be asked, though, and remember that U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch has called these specific indictments "just the beginning."