FIFA leadership with corruption, bribery, and vote-rigging related to the election of FIFA president Sepp Blatter and the organization's decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively. These allegations led to the indictments of nine high-ranking FIFA officials and five corporate executives by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges including racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. On 27 May 2015, several of these officials were arrested by Swiss authorities, who were launching a simultaneous but separate criminal investigation into how the organization awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Those among these officials who
Sepp Blatter in a statement, "note[d] with satisfaction" that the report "confirms that 'President Blatter's conduct could not be classified in any way as misconduct with regard to any ethics rules'." He added he has "no doubt that FIFA, thanks to the governance reform process that [Blatter] proposed now has the mechanisms and means to ensure that such an issue does not happen again", though admitting that the scandal "has caused untold damage to the reputation of [FIFA]." In 2015, elections were scheduled for the FIFA presidency, in which Blatter was again the incumbent candidate, running for a fifth consecutive term. Prince