Over the weekend, John Oliver said some tremendously funny things about Sepp Blatter. You should watch them.

The basis of his quick two-minute diatribe revolved around the impending faux vote for FIFA president Sepp Blatter, which comes up in less than two weeks. Despite his latent sexism, reliance on pseudo-science to claim we are all genetically racist, claims that gays should “refrain from any sexual activities” in Qatar, his intimation that a transfer practice was akin to “modern slavery,” and any other laundry list of depressing factoids, Blatter will almost assuredly be reelected.

This may surprise you. And it should. Just last week, ESPN released a documentary on Blatter that laid bare many of the issues swirling around the man. You can now watch the entire thing on YouTube.

As supplementary reading material, you’ll need to check out this excellent Bloomberg piece on Blatter. The story notes that the FBI has been probing FIFA’s alleged scandals – one of which is the smoke surrounding Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup – and it made this harrowing statement: “FIFA does not yet seem capable of putting an end to corruption scandals.” Its subsequent admittance that it doesn’t know the extent of FIFA’s scandalous reach is perhaps even more telling.

And then, in the wake of that E:60 documentary, this.

Sources tell E:60 that Sepp Blatter has decided, due to the FBI investigation, that it would be unwise to set foot on American soil. — E:60 (@E60) May 12, 2015

So we’re dealing with a hunted man who can sense the men with spears and rifles at his back. That makes him orders of magnitude more dangerous. Nothing fights with quite the tenacity of a hunted animal. Don’t forget, this is a man whose war room at FIFA headquarters in Zurich is encased in concrete in a bunker underneath the earth, and it looks like it was ripped from page 247z.4 from the Death Star’s construction blueprints.

Blatter’s insistence that he doesn’t need to campaign for reelection because his resume does the talking on his behalf is blatantly disingenuous. Because Blatter’s getting sloppy. Don’t forget, he made these claims in the midst of reports that one worker died every two days in Qatar in 2014, and a team of BBC journalists was imprisoned in horrific conditions for simply filming B-roll of the working conditions in the Gulf state. This is nearly a carbon repeat of what happened to German filmmaker Peter Giesel in 2013. In the space of two years, nothing’s changed.

And yet Blatter’s position, by both his estimation and those in power, has seemingly never been surer. Does this make sense? No, it does not. But neither does the way FIFA’s run, like a clandestine plaything for a group of smug millionaires.

But there are two reasons why Blatter’s soot-stained reign will almost assuredly continue. Unsurprisingly, one of them is money.

Over the four-year period leading up to and through the 2014 World Cup, FIFA pocketed an obscene $5.72 billion from broadcast rights and sponsorships. That’s on top of a reported reserve of somewhere in the $1.5 billion range. Considering each of the 25 members of the ExCo make $300,000/year, and many of them have been lavishly feted by Blatter himself, most will be just fine dancing with the devil they know.

The second is down to Blatter’s sheer force of will to stay in power via the means available.

There are 209 delegates in the FIFA Congress. Each has one vote in the presidential election, regardless of their country’s size. That means the Cayman Islands (population: 58,435) has the same sway as Brazil (population: 200.4 million), arguably the world’s most soccer-crazed nation.

As such, Blatter’s spent an uncommon amount of time visiting and dolling out handouts to small nations in exchange for their support. This is from that same Bloomberg article.

Although the men’s team from the Caymans usually loses—in March, its first international match in more than three years resulted in a goalless tie with Belize (rank: 159)—the Cayman Islands Football Association is one of the biggest powers at FIFA. Webb’s regional confederation nominated the Caymans’ treasurer, Canover Watson, to FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, the panel that’s supposed to be international soccer’s bulwark against corruption. In November, Caymanian authorities charged Watson with money laundering and fraud related to his role as chairman of the Cayman Islands Health Services Authority; he allegedly steered contracts to a business in which he had a financial interest. FIFA has temporarily suspended Watson from the audit committee. Watson declined to comment but has denied the charges.

Well, that sounds promising.

The question lingering in the ether is now how, exactly, Qatar has enough momentum to switch its World Cup to the winter in defiance of almost every international club schedule, and how, exactly, Blatter is still confidently stumping for his candidacy by not stumping at all. How is all this still happening? How is Luis Figo not more than a token candidate running to give Blatter a backboard to knock his insane thoughts off? It’s like openly flouting everything and anything involved with the mere idea of an ethics committee. “Come and get me,” Blatter’s crossed arms seem to scream. “Because I’m untouchable.”

Whether those days will ever end are unclear, but Blatter’s managed to parry away the noise until now. A minor miracle in itself. The sheer amount of money Qatar paid to secure votes for the World Cup – in excess of $20 billion – doesn’t even point definitively back to out-and-out corruption. Just shady practices that point vaguely toward something deeper.

What that is, and whether we’ll find it out before 2022, has never been of higher interest. And it’s never seemed further away.