GENEVA (AP) — Nine years into a World Cup black market tickets investigation, the case against former FIFA official Jérôme Valcke was finally closed.
The Swiss attorney general’s office said on Friday it has decided to end the criminal proceedings into an alleged tickets deal proposed for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Other criminal cases that once implicated Valcke in a sprawling Swiss investigation of FIFA business also have been closed, though one is ongoing at appeal after he was found guilty on some charges and acquitted of others at two trials.
Proceedings against “among others, Jerôme Valcke, in connection with the award of media rights are still pending in front of the Federal Supreme Court,” said the federal prosecution office which, like Valcke separately, has appealed against the second trial verdict from June 2022.
That case, which revealed how Valcke got use of a Qatari-owned vacation home on an Italian island, also involves Nasser al-Khelaifi, the Paris Saint-Germain president, who was twice acquitted in 2020 and 2022 of inciting the FIFA official.
In the tickets case, Valcke was suspended from his job as FIFA secretary general in September 2015 because of allegations made by businessman Benny Alon. FIFA fired him four months later and banned him from soccer.
“This acknowledgement of Mr. Jérôme Valcke’s full innocence is the outcome that was always expected,” his lawyers in Geneva, Patrick Hunziker and Elisa Bianchetti, said in a statement.
Valcke worked from 2007-15 alongside long-time FIFA president Sepp Blatter until both were ousted in fallout from United States and Swiss federal investigations of international soccer officials.
Federal proceedings, later closed without charges being brought, related to payments directed toward former FIFA vice president Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago: A $10 million payment channelled through FIFA from South Africa, the 2010 World Cup host; and a $1 million loan in 2010 later waived.
Prosecutors in Zurich also closed a criminal complaint filed by the current FIFA management relating to its soccer museum in the city that opened in 2016.
The 64-year-old Valcke remains banned from soccer by FIFA through 2032.
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FILE - Then-FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke speaks to the media during his news conference in Samara, Russia, June 10, 2015. (AP Photo, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s first Black female mayor, London Breed, conceded the race for mayor to Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie on Thursday, pledging a smooth transition as he takes over the job.
The Associated Press has not called the race.
Breed, who was raised by her grandmother in public housing, could not overcome deep voter discontent and lost to anti-poverty nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie.
“At the end of the day, this job is bigger than any one person and what matters is that we keep moving this City forward,” Breed said, adding that she had called Lurie to congratulate him. “I know we are both committed to improving this City we love.”
While San Francisco’s streets have been cleaner and homeless tents much harder to find in recent months, Breed’s fellow Democratic challengers on the campaign trail repeatedly hammered her administration for doing too little, too late as homeless tent encampments, open-air drug use and brazen retail theft proliferated during her six years in office.
Voters flocked to Lurie, 47, a city native from a storied family who pledged to bring accountability and public service back to City Hall. He is the founder of anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point Community, which says it has invested more than $400 million since 2005 in programs to help people with housing, education and early childhood.
“I’m deeply grateful to my incredible family, campaign team and every San Franciscan who voted for accountability, service, and change,” Lurie said in a statement. “No matter who you supported in this election, we stand united in the fight for San Francisco’s future and a safer and more affordable city for all.”
Lurie pumped nearly $9 million of his own money into his first-time bid for mayor, which drew criticism from Breed and other opponents. But he said that as a political outsider, he needed to introduce himself to voters and in the end, some voters said they liked that Lurie’s financial wealth shielded him from being beholden to special interests.
Lurie is an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune through his mother, Mimi Haas, who wed Peter Haas when Daniel was a child. Peter Haas, a great-grandnephew of Levi Strauss, was a longtime CEO of the iconic clothing company who died in 2005.
Both the Levi’s name and Haas family philanthropic foundations are deeply embedded in San Francisco’s history and identity.
Lurie’s father, Brian Lurie, is a rabbi and longtime former executive director of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation.
Breed won election as mayor in June 2018 to serve out the remainder of Mayor Ed Lee’s term.
She was reelected in 2019 to a full term that has lasted five years instead of the typical four, after voters changed the election calendar to line up with presidential contests.
Mayor London Breed speaks during an election night watch party at Little Skillet in San Francisco on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)