How FIFA’s Godfather and Brazil’s Biggest Gangster Forged a Deadly Alliance, ft. Conor Powell

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Castor de Andrade might just be the most powerful mobster you’ve never heard of. Born into a life of crime in Rio’s suburbs, he graduated from local lotteries to an empire encompassing Cali and Sicily—and he had his own soccer club. Even Brazil’s military dictators were terrified of Castor. But that didn’t scare off Joao Havelange, son of a gun-runner and a successful businessman who, as chief of FIFA, took a parochial, Eurocentric sport and turned it into a global powerhouse. But as Castor, the country’s “Carnival King”, began eliminating his rivals, the relationship with soccer’s most powerful man turned it—and the game—into something very different. As journalist Conor Powell, host of the Lords of Soccer podcast, tells us, it was a trend that has only gotten bigger today Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Castor de Andrade might just be the most powerful mobster you've never heard of.
0:07.1	In the 1980s and 90s the Mathieu Boss is one of Brazil's most famous people
0:15.3	with an electric smile and a rotating wardrobe of brightly colored silk shirts that make your average TV game show
0:19.9	host proud. He has a nickname too, the King of Carnival. And that's just not because of his
0:26.6	wild style. Kastre is one of the guides who made Brazil's carnival into the world-renowned
0:31.9	attraction it is today, a
0:34.0	melee of half-naked, pulsating and gyrating women dancing through the streets of
0:39.4	Rio and other Brazilian cities in the days leading up to the Christian period of Lent.
0:45.8	Castor's very own Samba School wins carnival championship after championship.
0:50.8	It might sound weird that a dance competition is such a massive deal, but in Brazil that is huge.
0:57.0	Kaster cozies up to power and he's regularly seen with the nation's elite actors, sports
1:04.7	stars, business leaders and politicians. But what really makes cast
1:09.5	almighty is illegal gambling. He runs an underground lottery called Jogo Dubishu that is so
1:15.8	popular in the 80s it's estimated to bring in over a billion dollars each year. At his core then, Kaster is a bookie, a money launderer and a
1:26.6	gangster. His criminal network doesn't just move cash but weapons and drugs and
1:31.9	his underworld influence spreads far beyond the Amazon,
1:34.8	moving money for organizations including the Cali cartel in Colombia and Sicily's Kossa Nostra.
1:41.2	Kaster will stand accused of murdering quote inconvenient figures in
1:46.2	Brazilian society. Some say he's responsible for the deaths of over 50 rivals.
1:51.9	But today's show isn't just about Castor de Andrade, or his empire.
1:57.0	It's about his relationship with another empire, one whose influence has permeated every corner of the planet.
2:04.0	FIFA, the Federation Internationale of Football Association.
	...

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