For­mer Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball (Con­ca­caf) ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Chuck Blaz­er, once a close friend and con­fi­dant of Jack Warn­er, spent months com­pil­ing in­for­ma­tion for the FBI and IRS with se­cret de­vices hid­den on his per­son, the New York Dai­ly News has re­port­ed.

In an ex­pose over the week­end, the pa­per re­port­ed that Blaz­er se­cret­ly taped con­ver­sa­tion with of­fi­cials from Fi­fa and oth­er top sport­ing bod­ies with record­ing de­vices since 2011, af­ter he agreed to help the FBI.Blaz­er's co­op­er­a­tion can re­port­ed­ly help the au­thor­i­ties se­cure crim­i­nal charges against pow­er­ful cur­rent and for­mer Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tives.

It said Blaz­er, now 69 and grave­ly ill with colon can­cer, is at the epi­cen­ter of a sprawl­ing crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in which au­thor­i­ties are an­gling to link fraud and mon­ey-laun­der­ing to the high­est lev­els of soc­cer around the world ahead of the 2018 World Cup in Rus­sia.

His sur­rep­ti­tious as­sis­tance over the last three years co­in­cid­ed with a se­ries of in­ter­nal­ly com­mis­sioned cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tions that stretch from the Caribbean to Zurich, from Aus­tralia to Moscow to Qatar, the small Arab na­tion play­ing host to the 2022 World Cup.A spokesper­son for the US at­tor­ney's of­fice in New York nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied the re­port when con­tact­ed by the pa­per.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it said, is be­lieved to in­clude a grand ju­ry and has gen­er­at­ed re­quests sent to sub­jects in for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions in­clud­ing Zurich, home to Fi­fa, where Swiss bank­ing se­cre­cy laws have long pro­tect­ed mas­sive busi­ness deals from pub­lic scruti­ny.Delia Fis­ch­er, head of me­dia for Fi­fa, told the pa­per, "We nev­er had any re­quest from the Amer­i­can law en­force­ment in re­gards to (Blaz­er's co­op­er­a­tion with the US gov­ern­ment)."

Those who would be shak­en by Blaz­er's help to the FBI and IRS in­clude mem­bers of Fi­fa's pow­er­ful ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee, of which Blaz­er and Warn­er were mem­bers dur­ing Blaz­er's tenure from 1996 to 2013.The pa­per vis­it­ed Blaz­er for com­ment but he re­port­ed­ly re­fused, say­ing, "I just can't talk about that."The FBI re­port­ed­ly used Blaz­er's fail­ure to pay tax­es on un­de­clared in­come as lever­age to lure him in­to help­ing them.

The re­port said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was fa­cil­i­tat­ed af­ter Blaz­er and Warn­er were oust­ed from Con­ca­caf in 2011 and the body launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion which pro­duced a 144-page in­tegri­ty re­port that ac­cused the duo of com­mit­ting fraud against the or­gan­i­sa­tion, breach­ing their fidu­cia­ry du­ties, vi­o­lat­ing Con­ca­caf and Fi­fa statutes, mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing funds and vi­o­lat­ing US tax laws.

Their sack­ings fol­lowed a Caribbean Foot­ball Union meet­ing which Warn­er host­ed at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel in Trinidad, where then Fi­fa pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mo­hammed bin Ham­mam al­leged­ly hand­ed out en­velopes stuffed with $40,000 cash in a bid to un­seat Sepp Blat­ter atop Fi­fa.Fi­fa sub­se­quent­ly banned Bin Ham­mam while Warn­er re­signed.