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Moscow blasts "illegal exterritorial use of U.S. laws" in FIFA scandal

Xinhua, May 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday slammed the United States for trying to exercise law beyond its own borders in response to the arrests of seven high- ranking officials of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) in Switzerland at the request of the U.S. authorities.

"Without going into details of the charges, we believe this is another instance of illegal exterritorial use of U.S. laws," the ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in an online statement.

He said the corruption scandal should not be used to tarnish the image of FIFA and to harm the organization's decisions.

"Once again, we urge Washington to stop attempts to exercise justice far beyond its own borders, and follow the generally accepted international legal procedures," the spokesman added.

Earlier in the day, 14 FIFA senior officials and corporate executives, including FIFA vice president Jeffery Webb, were arrested in Zurich and pending extradition due to United States authorities suspecting them of having received bribes.

The bribery suspects, representatives of sports media and sports promotion firms, are alleged to have been involved in schemes to make payments to the soccer functionaries - delegates of FIFA and other functionaries of FIFA sub-organizations - totaling more than 150 million U.S. dollars.

Vitaly Mutko, Russian Sports Minister and a member of the FIFA Executive Committee, said earlier that many of the functionaries had no relation to the 2018 World Cup bidding campaign and that the case will not affect preparations for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

He also denied that Swiss police had questioned him over the scandal. Endite