INTERNATIONAL NEWS - Sepp Blatter, who led world soccer’s governing body for 17 years and who was regarded as one of the most powerful people in global sports, announced yesterday that he would resign from his position.
He made his announcement in Zurich as law enforcement officials in the United States confirmed that he was a focus of a federal corruption investigation.
Mr. Blatter had for days tried to distance himself from the controversy, but several United States officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that in their efforts to build a case against Mr. Blatter, they were hoping to win the cooperation of some of the FIFA officials now under indictment and work their way up the organization.
In announcing that he would resign from his post as FIFA president amid a federal corruption investigation, Sepp Blatter said, “I cherish FIFA more than anything.”
Mr. Blatter’s resignation speech, which he delivered in French to a mostly empty room at FIFA headquarters, served as a stunning coda to a dramatic sequence of events that began last Wednesday with a police raid at a five-star hotel, where seven soccer officials were arrested and held for extradition to the United States on corruption charges.
