Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Ragi.

Much of the world is riveted by the World Cup right now, but those of us who have followed

FIFA's travails know that it's a pretty seedy place.

Well, it had simmered for decades.

The real scope of FIFA corruption became clear after the FBI raid of the posh Borrelak

hotel in Zurich.

But no one knows the details of FIFA's stream of scandals better than my guest today, Ken Benzinger.

Ken is an investigative journalist for BuzzFeed, based in Los Angeles, and the author of the

fantastic new book on FIFA released in June, Red Card, How the U.S. blew the whistle on the

world's biggest sports scandal.

Ken, you've been busy since your book came out on June 12, so thanks so much for making the

time to speak with me again.

Oh, it's such a great pleasure to do this.

FIFA has proven to be a near-perfect

case study for misconduct. So here's this international non-profit sports organization,

but anything we read about it involves wiretaps and extradition and MLATs and witness intimidation,

at least one legal filing compares it directly to an organized crime

syndicate. Why don't you start with a brief overview of what happened? I don't know how brief we can be.

It's a long story. And then I'm going to ask you to walk us through the violations one at a time.

It's a slightly different angle on the story, but you are definitely the best man for the job.

First of all, I want to say, I can't tell you how much pleasure it gives me to finally be able to talk about MLATs in some public forum.

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