MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of meddling in the affairs of football’s governing body FIFA and hinted that its corruption investigation is part of an attempt to take the 2018 World Cup away from his country.

The Kremlin strongman condemned the arrest of seven top FIFA officials, accusing Washington of trying to oust football boss Sepp Blatter after he resisted pressure to stop Russia hosting the World Cup.

“I have no doubt that this is yet another evident attempt to derail Mr. Blatter’s re-election as FIFA president,” Putin said in comments released on Thursday. “We know about the pressure that has been put on [Blatter] with the aim of banning the holding of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

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“His general position is that sport and politics should be kept apart.”

The arrests Wednesday in Zurich two days ahead of a FIFA presidential vote was “clearly an attempt to block the re-election of Blatter,” Putin said, alleging the US was trying to “spread its jurisdiction to other countries”.

“If anything happened, it did not happen on U.S. territory and the United States has nothing to do with it,” he said. “This is yet another blatant attempt [by the United States] to extend its jurisdiction to other states.”

Putin said even if “someone has done something wrong,” Russia “has nothing to do with it”.

He then tried to portray the probe as a US attempt to go after dissenters, likening the case to the persecution of whistleblowers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

“Our American counterparts, unfortunately, are using the same methods to reach their goals and illegally persecute people. I don’t rule out that this is the case in relation to FIFA,” Putin said.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2015

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