Judge drops bribery charges in soccer corruption case against Fox executive

A federal judge ended one of the longest-running pieces of the FIFA corruption crackdown, dropping bribery and fraud charges against former Fox International Channels chief executive Hernan Lopez and South American sports media company Full Play Group SA in Brooklyn.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. told Judge Pamela K. Chen that the case no longer fit the Trump administration’s priorities, which he said now center on terrorism, national security, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking and violent gangs. Outside court, Lopez called the outcome a relief and said, “a case that never should have started is finally over.”

Chen said the government’s written explanation was enough to justify dismissal, and she made clear that her ruling was not based on her earlier acquittal order in the case. The prosecution had been revived by an appeals court in July 2025, and further review was pending before the Supreme Court of the United States, a reminder of how long these transnational cases can linger after the headlines fade.

The decision closes a significant branch of the wider soccer corruption investigation that burst into public view on May 27, 2015, when the Justice Department unsealed a 47-count indictment against 14 defendants, including nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives. Prosecutors said the conspiracy stretched across 24 years and involved more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks tied to media and marketing rights. Seven defendants were arrested in Zurich at the request of the United States, including Jeffrey Webb, Jack Warner, Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel and José Maria Marin.

The broader FIFA scandal reached far beyond one executive and one South American broadcaster. It triggered resignations, disciplinary action and lifetime bans inside world soccer, while also producing money that FIFA said had already been returned to the sport. In a court filing, FIFA said the U.S. government had turned over $201 million to FIFA and other organizations for soccer-related projects with community impact around the world.

Still, the dismissal underscores how dependent even sprawling anti-corruption cases are on changing prosecutorial priorities years after the fact. FIFA said dropping the Lopez and Full Play case would have no direct effect on other defendants’ convictions, and the Justice Department said the other prosecutions had their own facts and circumstances. Bloomberg Law reported that Justice Department leadership had worried that ending the case could ripple through dozens of related prosecutions and hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, a sign that the legacy of the FIFA crackdown is both structural and fragile: it reshaped the sport, but it also showed how much can depend on sustained political will.