Christopher Steele, who wrote reports on compromising material Russian operatives allegedly had collected on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, is a former officer in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, according to people familiar with his career.

Corruption in FIFA

Former British intelligence officials said Mr. Steele spent years under diplomatic cover working for the agency, also known as MI-6, in Russia and Paris and at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. After he left the spy service, Mr. Steele supplied the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with information on corruption at FIFA, international soccer’s governing body. It was his work on corruption in international soccer that lent credence to his reporting on Mr. Trump’s entanglements in Russia, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

E-mails indicate that, in the summer of 2010, members of a New York-based FBI squad assigned to investigate “Eurasian Organised Crime” met Steele in London to discuss allegations of possible corruption in FIFA.

People familiar with Mr. Steele’s activities said his British-based company, Orbis Business Intelligence, was hired by the Football Association, Britain’s soccer governing body, to investigate FIFA. — Reuters