ZURICH — FIFA and embattled President Sepp Blatter faced more pressure on Monday as U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch predicted a new round of indictments in a widening investigation of corruption in international soccer.
"We do anticipate pursuing additional charges against individuals and entities," Lynch said in FIFA's home city, in her first news conference about the case since the stunning May 27 arrests of seven people at a luxury hotel in Zurich.
Lynch spoke alongside her Swiss counterpart, Michael Lauber, whose separate investigation of money laundering appears equally threatening to FIFA and its soon-departing president.
Swiss federal agencies have seized properties in the Swiss Alps and seized evidence during house searches in western Switzerland, Lauber said.
"Investment in real estate can be used for the purpose of money laundering," said Lauber, whose case seems to be widening beyond its original focus of FIFA's criminal complaint about the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding contests.
A total of 121 bank accounts have been reported as suspicious by a Swiss financial intelligence unit to Lauber's team of prosecutors, he said.
The two federal prosecutors shared a stage almost four months after the scale of their investigations was made public. Two days before the FIFA presidential election on May 29, Lynch's Department of Justice indicted 14 soccer and marketing officials and unsealed six guilty pleas in a $150 million bribery and racketeering conspiracy.
Lynch did not comment Monday on whether Blatter is targeted in her case, or whether he faced arrest by traveling to a country which has an extradition treaty with the United States.