This week, a modified lawsuit from Hollinger International, the firm he "controls" with special voting shares, accuses him, his wife, his firms and three colleagues of racketeering under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Seven top Fifa officials were arrested in dawn raids at the Baur au Lac hotel on Wednesday and seven more were charged in the US over racketeering, money laundering and tax evasion.
His demand for and receipt of bribes, the authorities allege, was a key part of a 24-year racketeering and bribery conspiracy, dating from 1991 to 2015, which led to "endemic corruption" of Fifa itself.
Related: The Guardian view on Sepp Blatter: at last, it's time to start rebuilding Fifa | Editorial Under intense pressure from ongoing investigations by the FBI and Swiss prosecutors that have already led to 18 senior football executives being charged in the US on charges of money laundering, tax evasion and racketeering, Blatter said he had decided to step down.
It revealed how the judge in the case, Raymond Dearie, referred to Fifa as a "racketeering influenced corrupt organization", the same terminology used in cases of organised crime, and only allowed the hearing to proceed after the Brooklyn courtroom had been locked.
Related: FBI inquiry extends to awards of 2018 and 2022 World Cups – live updates Blazer's guilty plea to a slew of charges including racketeering, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering, income tax and banking offences was revealed last week, on the same day as 17 other Fifa officials and marketing executives were charged with similar crimes.
That money was allegedly pocketed by former Concacaf president, Jack Warner, who is on Interpol's wanted persons list for charges including racketeering, conspiracy and corruption.
Blazer, the Concacaf general secretary for 21 years between 1990 and 2011, is said to have pleaded guilty in 2013 to 10 counts including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, income tax evasion from 2005-2010, and failure to file reports of his foreign bank accounts.
In all they were charged with 47 counts of money laundering, racketeering and tax evasion in what prosecutors called the "World Cup of fraud".
The US indictment that charged 14 Fifa officials of 47 counts of racketeering and fraud had earlier alleged that Warner "laundered the funds through accounts held in the name of a large supermarket chain and affiliated investment company in Trinidad".
"Russia does not even figure in any way in the many pages of text published for the press yesterday by the US Justice Department," Will Stevens, spokesperson for the embassy in Moscow, said in a statement, referring to the indictment of 14 Fifa officials on charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.
