By Marlisse Silver Sweeney, From The Am Law Daily

William Burck of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has taken the legal field for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association as soccer’s global governing body is rocked by corruption charges against nine of its officials and five corporate executives. Burck has been retained within the past month by the Zurich-based organization, according to sources briefed on the matter.

The sweeping 47-count indictment announced on May 27 by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Kelly Currie, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, includes charges for racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering conspiracies and a 24-year plan in which FIFA higher-ups allegedly corrupted international soccer to get rich.

The announcement also included guilty pleas of four individuals and two corporate defendants, including Charles “Chuck” Blazer, former general secretary of CONCACAF—a confederation of North American, Central American and Caribbean soccer federations—and a past U.S. representative on FIFA’s executive committee.

FIFA joins a laundry list of interesting clients for Burck. A former special counsel and deputy counsel to President George W. Bush, Burck left Weil, Gotshal & Manges in January 2012 to co-head Quinn Emanuel’s office in Washington, D.C. He’s defended cloud storage company Megaupload in what the U.S. Department of Justice calls the largest criminal copyright case in American history and acted for former Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga. The latter challenged the results of Kenya’s 2013 election under a newly implemented election fraud law in the eastern African nation.

Maureen McDonnell, the former first lady of Virginia, is another high-profile Burck client. She was sentenced in February to one year in prison for her role in a corruption scandal after a federal jury found McDonnell and her husband—former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell—guilty on public corruption charges.

June will be a busy month for Burck, as he’s currently defending Joseph Sigelman, a former CEO of oilfield services company PetroTiger, against federal bribery charges brought under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Many in the U.S. legal community are closely watching the case, which saw court proceedings start Tuesday, as a test on whether the federal government can successfully bring foreign bribery cases to trial, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Coincidentally, an internal investigation at PetroTiger into allegations of corruption involving its acquisition of a Colombian company, was conducted by none other than Timothy Treanor, the co-leader of Sidley Austin’s white-collar criminal defense and investigations practice in New York.

Treanor’s the same attorney who took the lead for CONCACAF on its 2012 investigation into Jack Warner, the former president of the Miami-based confederation, and Blazer, at the behest of the FIFA’s integrity committee.

Since then, Treanor has continued to advise CONCACAF, managing its interactions with the Justice Department in the current investigations. Sidley partners William Kerr and Samir Gandhi are also representing CONCACAF, focusing on corporate governance, crisis counseling, sponsor contracts and other matters. Treanor told The Am Law Daily that CONCACAF has been actively cooperating with the Justice Department and is itself a victim.

Individual defendants caught up in the rapidly unraveling corruption scandal roiling FIFA have also started retaining legal representation.

Jeffrey Webb, a FIFA vice president and now former president of CONCACAF, has hired Clifford Chance partner Edward O’Callaghan, a former federal prosecutor who joined the Magic Circle firm’s New York office from Nixon Peabody in 2011. O’Callaghan once served as co-chief of the terrorism and national security unit in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, leaving in 2008 to join Sen. John McCain’s ill-fated presidential campaign as a senior adviser.

The first defendant to address the government’s charges in federal court, Aaron Davidson, appeared with Holland & Knight partner Michael Hantman in Miami. On May 29, Davidson pleaded not guilty to allegations including money laundering and wire fraud, and the sports marketing executive is currently under electronic monitoring after being released on $5 million bail, according to news reports.

Setting up in the corner for those already convicted include Eric Corngold and Mary Mulligan of New York’s Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman, who are advising Blazer. Corngold previously was one of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s key senior aides when Cuomo served as the Empire State’s attorney general. Corngold, a former executive deputy attorney general for economic justice in New York, also spent 16 years as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, the same district that filed charges against Blazer, who has been cooperating with the government.

The Associated Press reports that Benjamin Brafman and Joshua Kirshner of New York’s Brafman & Associates, along with Lankler Siffert & Wohl name partner Frank Wohl, are acting for Daryan Warner, son of defendant Jack Warner. Brafman, a prominent New York criminal defense lawyer, has previously represented Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund and a onetime candidate for the French presidency, on sexual assault charges brought by a Manhattan hotel maid. Brafman also briefly advised the late pop icon Michael Jackson. Daryll Warner, another son of Jack Warner’s, has retained Maurice Sercarz of New York’s Sercarz & Riopelle, according to the AP.

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton partner Lewis Liman—brother of Hollywood movie director Doug Liman (both are sons of late New York lawyer Arthur Liman)—is representing José Hawilla, owner and founder of the Traffic Group, a sports marketing conglomerate based in Brazil, who has pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Liman is also representing two of Hawilla’s companies, Traffic Sports International and Traffic Sports USA, both of which have entered guilty pleas to wire fraud conspiracy.

Lawyers for the defendants mentioned above could not be reached for comment by press time, or declined to comment.

Overseeing the sprawling corruption case is Currie, a former Crowell & Moring partner. He joined the firm in 2010 after 11 years as prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York. While at Crowell & Moring, Currie conducted an internal probe into his colleague Douglas Arntsen, who was disbarred after pleading guilty to embezzling $10.7 million in client funds.

Currie returned to the Eastern District in November at Lynch’s prompting. After a quick five months as first assistant U.S. attorney under Lynch, he became the office’s acting top lawyer in late April as Lynch was sworn in as U.S. attorney general. Now one of the government’s biggest investigations of the year—and perhaps Currie’s career—is in his hands.

And with FIFA president Joseph “Sepp” Blatter resigning this week amid reports that federal prosecutors are focusing their attention on the Swiss football administrator, the government’s case could still grow larger. In November, Kirkland & Ellis partner Michael Garcia—himself a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York—publicly backed away from an internal FIFA report that he said misrepresented his findings. Garcia then quit in December, and now it will be up to Currie to further probe FIFA, an organization that has been criticized for its opacity.

“Let me be clear: This indictment is not the final chapter in our investigation,” Currie said last month. Other federal prosecutors on his team include assistant U.S. attorneys Keith Edelman, Amanda Hector, Darren LaVerne, Brian Morris, Samuel Nitze and Evan Norris.

IMAGE: Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, who resigned this week as president of FIFA.

VALERIANO DI DOMENICO

For more on this story go to: http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202728446917/FIFA-Taps-Quinn-Emanuel-Amid-Ongoing-Corruption-Probe-As-Others-Grab-Key-Roles#ixzz3cCd4VU00

Related story:

FIFA email connects Sepp Blatter to $10M, newspaper claims
AP From USA Today

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A 2007 email shows FIFA President Sepp Blatter and then-South African President Thabo Mbeki held “discussions” over $10 million that ultimately went to allegedly corrupt soccer executives as payback for supporting the country’s World Cup bid, a newspaper claimed Sunday.

South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that the email from FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke to the South African government asks when the $10 million will be transferred.

The newspaper said that in the email, which was not published, Valcke wrote that the $10 million was “based on discussions between FIFA and the South African government, and also between our President (Blatter) and President Thabo Mbeki.”

For more on this story go to: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/soccer/2015/06/07/fifa-email-connects-sepp-blatter-to-10m-newspaper-claims/28639841/