By Jeré Longman From The New York Times

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands — Chickens scurried about on Friday morning as a bulldozer spread crushed rock for a new soccer field with artificial turf at the Cayman Islands Football Association.

It might seem unlikely that FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, has spent $2.2 million since 2002 to build a new headquarters for the soccer association and to fund two planned fields, given that the land is swampy and a grass field struggled to exist in brackish conditions.

FIFA’s generosity might seem even more improbable, considering that the Cayman Islands, a Caribbean tax and tourist haven, is ranked 191st among the world’s 209 national soccer teams. The team has never played in a World Cup. And the entire population of the islands, about 58,000, would not come close to filling the world’s biggest soccer stadiums.

It also highlights a dynamic that empowers some FIFA officials with outsize authority to make decisions on lucrative contracts, perhaps prompting some to cross the line into criminal acts. One powerful soccer official from the Caymans is accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes, some of which was diverted to building a pool for his private residence in Georgia.

Under FIFA’s system, even the smallest country has the same voting power as the biggest, and payments from FIFA for fields and other projects — perfectly legal and documented — help to ensure allegiance to Mr. Blatter, even as he faces withering criticism in the face of accusations of rampant corruption in international soccer.

The Caymans became central to a racketeering and bribery scandal that engulfed the sport last week. The official, Jeffrey Webb, the longtime president of the Cayman Islands Football Association and the head of soccer’s regional governing body for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, known as Concacaf, was one of 14 officials indicted by the United States authorities on Wednesday. His chief attaché, Costas Takkas, was also indicted.

Once viewed as a reformer, and a potential president of FIFA, Mr. Webb is accused of seeking and receiving bribes worth millions of dollars from sports marketing firms that bought and then resold broadcast, marketing and sponsorship rights to regional soccer tournaments. Elaborate methods were used to try to disguise the payments, the indictment said.

Mr. Webb, 50, is said to be fighting extradition from Zurich, where he was arrested. He has been replaced as president of Concacaf; his downfall shocked and embarrassed many in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere.

Tall and athletic in appearance, Mr. Webb had an understated manner that gave him an endearing quality as an apparent reformer, said Stephen Sigmund, a New York public affairs consultant who assisted Mr. Webb with media training, speech writing and publicity in 2012.

“The entire pitch was that he was the guy who was going to clean Concacaf up rather than clean it out,” Mr. Sigmund said.

Yet even in scandal, the Caymans remain in some aspects as powerful as Germany, Argentina, Brazil or any other world soccer power. Like the other 208 national soccer federations in FIFA, the Cayman Islands gets one vote in the quadrennial election for FIFA’s president.

IMAGE:
Work was underway in the Cayman Islands on Friday on a lot where new soccer fields are planned, with money from FIFA. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times
Work was underway in the Cayman Islands on Friday on a lot where new soccer fields are planned, with money from FIFA.
Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times

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