Free The Big Fix by Brett Forrest Page B

attorney, oversaw EWS. He wanted to keep these new allegations from UEFA under wraps until he had a chance to probe the claims personally. He phoned Limacher to arrange a meeting with the UEFA investigator who was the source of the information. The man’s name was Robin Boksic.
    Through Limacher, Villiger met Boksic, who claimed to possess intelligence reports and documented evidence that several national teams were preparing to fix matches during World Cup competition. Boksic didn’t produce the information, but Villiger was so concerned by what he heard that he hired Boksic to work for FIFA in South Africa.
    At FIFA headquarters, Villiger informed Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s secretary general. Valcke admonished him, explaining that FIFA had just hired a veteran cop, Chris Eaton, to run security at the World Cup. FIFA didn’t need two ­people covering the same ground in South Africa.
    FIFA was confused. Historically, the organization’s response to match-­fixing had been noncommittal, and that wasn’t a surprise. FIFA execs did not believe that match-­fixing was their concern. Whenever national soccer federations notified FIFA about suspected incidents of match-­fixing, FIFA routinely claimed that the responsibility for eradicating fixing from the game lay with the federations themselves. This was a matter for law enforcement. “Every member association is responsible for organizing and supervising football in its country,” says FIFA spokesman Wolfgang Resch. “Since FIFA has jurisdiction only over persons affiliated with FIFA, it will never be possible to control parties outside the current system.”
    FIFA did have a point. It was not a policing agency. It couldn’t make arrests. It possessed no powers to investigate. Its business was sports management and promotion. FIFA’s only mandated responsibility was staging the World Cup every four years, along with the assorted friendlies that elapsed in the time between the main competition. However, by remaining passive on the issue, rather than playing a strong hand, FIFA nurtured a culture of match-­fixing laissez-­faire. There was no single body that was more responsible for the welfare of the game. But as Eaton was soon to learn, it didn’t appear as though anyone was responsible at all.
    Match-­fixing was so far down the list of priorities at FIFA that the ­people who had hired Chris Eaton neglected to mention it to him. Eaton had never heard of match-­fixing. In all his years of police work, he had been focused on crimes that made a cop’s career, transgressions of apparently more immediate importance—­violent crimes, financial crimes, trafficking. Like most cops he did not yet understand that match-­fixing, with its hundreds of billions of dollars in play, had become a violation that facilitated the traditional businesses of organized crime. Match-­fixing money mingled with drug money, prostitution money, blood money.
    Ignorant though he was of match-­fixing, Eaton was no stranger to scandal and the damage it could bring to an institution. When he received an email from Marco Villiger, providing a sketch of Boksic’s claims, Eaton naturally understood the impact that a fixing scandal could have on his new employer. “This would have sent fear through the hearts of Blatter and Valcke,” Eaton says. “They’ve already got the problem of confounded security at the World Cup, and now bloody allegations of match-­fixing?” As Eaton discussed the issue with Villiger further, he grew even more concerned. Villiger had no experience handling controlled informants, so Eaton placed little value on his assessment of Boksic’s worth and reliability. Eaton so clearly grasped the threat to FIFA’s integrity that he spoke with Villiger bluntly. Eaton would handle Boksic personally, without interference. He didn’t want to get entangled in the corporate