Swiss investigating 53 cases of possible money laundering at Fifa

Owen Gibson
Wednesday 17 June 2015 10.35 BST

Swiss investigators are looking into 53 possible cases of money laundering and 104 incidents of suspicious activity in Swiss bank accounts as part of their investigation into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

The head of Fifa’s audit and compliance committee, Domenico Scala, has already reiterated that there could be a revote for 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 tournament in Qatar if clear evidence of bribery emerged.

The Swiss attorney general Michael Lauber, giving an update into the Swiss investigation that is running in parallel to an FBI inquiry that has already resulted in 14 executives being charged and plunged Fifa into crisis, said investigators were examining “nine terabytes” of data from Fifa’s Zurich headquarters and Swiss banks.

“I am well aware of the enormous public interest in our investigation. Equally enormous is the public interest in an independent criminal procedure,” Lauber said. “Our investigation is of great complexity and quite substantial. To give you an example: The SAG (Swiss attorney general’s office) has seized around nine terabytes of data. So far, our investigative team has obtained evidence concerning 104 banking relations; be aware that every banking relation represents several bank accounts.”

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]