United States prosecutors have made public their 2013 plea agreement with former FIFA and CONCACAF executive Chuck Blazer, revealing the 70-year-old has been secretly providing authorities information in the ongoing FIFA corruption and conspiracy case for nearly four years.
[ FOLLOW: The latest #FIFAarrests news ]
The documents unsealed Monday confirms what had been suspected for quite some time now: Blazer has been working with and secretly providing information to prosecutors since December 2011, when he was first approached by federal agents.
According to the plea deal, Blazer will be forced to pay at least $2.5 million — plus back taxes and penalties on millions of dollars of unreported income — in exchange for prosecutors making no sentence recommendation for his crimes, according to NBC News.
[ RELATED: Sepp Blatter might not resign after all | Oliver and Warner trade blow for blow ]
The plea agreement, which was entered into in 2013, also reveals that Blazer pleaded guilty to 10 counts of conspiracy to commit racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering, a full year and a half before the case was announced and the arrests of 14 FIFA executives were made last month.
Blazer, who is unquestionably the star cooperating witness in the case, has not been an active soccer executive at any level since April 2013, nearly a year and a half after he began working with US authorities, when U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati was elected to succeed him on the FIFA executive committee.