Late in the evening on Friday, Sept. 1, as many people were looking to salvage a few final days of summer before Labor Day, the Honorable Pamela K. Chen of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York issued a 55-page decision setting aside guilty verdicts in the long-running FIFA prosecution.  In doing so, the court took the rare step of issuing judgments of acquittal following a jury’s conviction of a former Fox Sports executive and a media company for paying bribes to acquire lucrative contracts from international soccer organizations.

Daniel Koffmann

Relying principally on the Supreme Court’s May 2023 decision in Percoco v. United States, 598 U.S. 319 (2023).  Judge Chen held that the honest-services fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. §1346, cannot be used to prosecute bribes paid to a foreign employee of a foreign organization.

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