The sporting world was rocked by the arrests of several high-ranking FIFA officials with plans to extradite them to the United States to face racketeering and corruption charges.
While the allegations against the FIFA officials is about rich people in power doing illegal things to make themselves even wealthier, there is also a belief that the corruption is indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of workers.
In a column titled "The human toll of FIFA's corruption" for the Washington Post's Wonkblog, Christopher Ingraham pulled together the number of worker deaths associated with several recent World Cups and Olympic Games and compared that to the number of migrant worker deaths in Qatar. One estimate puts the death toll of migrant workers in Qatar since the country was awarded the 2022 World Cup at 1,200 workers. While no charges have been directly linked to Qatar's World Cup bid — Switzerland is still investigating the bid — the awarding of the tournament to a small country with little soccer history and weather not suited for the games has been mired in allegations of bribery.
The Qatari World Cup organizing committee strongly denied the validity of the numbers, and it is unclear how many of the migrant worker deaths are directly linked to the building of the World Cup infrastructure. But even if it is just a small percentage, the total is staggering.
