Heeding the U.S. Supreme Court’s clear message that ever-expanding constructions of the general fraud statutes are out of style, the latest decision out of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in the long-running FIFA saga has the potential to substantially curtail U.S. efforts to police foreign commercial bribery.

For nearly a decade, U.S. prosecutors have pursued instances of sports media executives and organizations bribing soccer officials in exchange for broadcast rights for Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) matches, securing 27 individual guilty pleas, 4 corporate guilty pleas, and 4 convictions at trial. Recently, an Eastern District judge vacated two of those trial convictions on the view that last term the Supreme Court sent “strongly worded rebukes” against expansive interpretations of the honest services wire fraud statute, such as to reach the bribery of foreign non-government employees, a central theory in the FIFA prosecutions.

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