Friday, May 29, 2015

On the Nature of Entrenched Power: FIFA’s President Ensconced in Corruption

In May 2015, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was “shocking FIFA like an earthquake,” according to the European newspaper, Das Bild.[1] She was leading “an American-led takedown of corruption in FIFA,” the Federation Internationale de Football Association, which oversees the sport of football, or soccer as it is known in the U.S., globally.[2] With great power comes resounding responsibility. When the head of an organization goes after the corruption-fighters rather than admitting to error at the very least in having presided over allegedly corrupt officials near the top—and in fact repeatedly dismisses calls to resign and not stand for re-election—the question becomes one of the intractability of squalid power, as if it were defying gravity—at least that of the ethical variety.
Sepp Blatter of FIFA, as if holding in all the bad news.

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.




[1] Josh Gerstein, “For Loretta Lynch, A Stunning Debut on the World Stage,” Politico, May 28, 2015.
[2] Ibid.