WHAT’S THE STORY?

SHE has taken on mobsters, sex traffickers and drug lords, so it is perhaps no surprise that America’s first female African American Attorney General is not afraid to take on one of the most powerful organisations in the world of sport.

What is extraordinary is that Loretta Lynch, the daughter of a Baptist minister, is only one month into her job after Republican senators blocked her appointment for nearly six months.

The 56-year-old is now being hailed a hero by football fans around the world for standing up to Fifa, blasting the world’s governing body of soccer for “rampant” corruption over more than two decades.

Last week, following an investigation by the FBI, Lynch announced 47 corruption charges against five marketing executives and nine leading officials.

“They were expected to uphold the rules that keep soccer honest. Instead they corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and enrich themselves,” she said, pledging that the US Department of Justice would “bring wrong-doers to justice” and “root out misconduct”.

The strong statements saw her face flashed on newsreels around the globe.

SLAVES

While Lynch has only just become Attorney General she has overseen the investigation over the last five years in her previous role as US Attorney of New York City’s Eastern District, where she earned an impressive reputation for taking on difficult cases, such as international sex trafficking rings, the Mafia and terrorists.

Admiration for her steady calm and perseverance has won the diminutive woman many admirers, not least President Barack Obama, who said: “Loretta might be the only lawyer in America who battles mobsters and drug lords and terrorists, and still has the reputation for being a charming ‘people person’.”

Lynch’s perseverance is no doubt born out of the fact that she has had to battle her way to the top with the odds stacked against her.

Brought up in North Carolina, she is descended from slaves and grew up hearing stories about the difficulties her parents faced through the racist Jim Crow segregation laws.

Her father, Lorenzo, said: “I was raised in a segregated society.

“I didn’t sit at the front of the bus because our father taught us: ‘Do not accept segregation in your heart. But you have to accept it physically. Because if you can just hold on, if you can just survive, the day will come when that will not be a battle.’”

His daughter was to come up against racism at an early age when she passed a school entrance exam with such a high mark the teachers thought she had been cheating and forced her to sit it again.

This time her score was even higher but despite always achieving the highest grades the school would not acknowledge it with any public recognition and made her share school honours with two other pupils.

“She was real quiet about it,” said Lorenzo. “I never heard about it from Loretta – I knew about it from some black teachers who secretly brought it to my attention.”

Undaunted, Lynch simply put her head down and kept on working, eventually turning down an enviable full scholarship to the University of North Carolina to enrol in Harvard where she gained first class honours in English, then a law degree.

BRIBES

Within a decade of leaving university she was chief of the Long Island branch of the US Attorney’s Office, where she became known for her relentless prosecution of political corruption, bringing local officials to justice for giving out building permits in return for bribes.

Impressed by her tenaciousness, President Bill Clinton nominated her in 1999 as US Attorney for the whole of Eastern District and in this role she became nationally known when she oversaw the prosecution of New York city police officers in the case of Haitian Abner Louima who was beaten badly by police then sodomised with a broom handle.

Public outrage led to high tensions during the trial, which saw the jailing of one officer for 30 years and Lynch being given protection from US marshalls.

She went back into private work on the election of George Bush but was brought back by Obama in 2010 and again made headlines for taking on big cases with international links, such as the breaking up of sex rings operating out of Central America and Mexico.

She was also in charge of the biggest Mafia arrest in the history of New York with charges laid against 127 members of Mafia families. Lynch has also successfully prosecuted gang members and terrorists.

In 2014, Obama nominated her for the post of Attorney General but she quickly became the target of an ugly partisan battle, with Republicans blocking her nomination to thwart Obama.

Her confirmation vote was denied for a record six months, with angry Democrats claiming it was equivalent to the Jim Crow laws by metaphorically making her “sit at the back of the bus”.

True to form, Lynch just quietly got on with her work – which happened to be the Fifa case, originally a spin-off from an unrelated investigation into Russian organised crime.

American banks have allegedly been used to channel bribes to soccer officials in return for fixing World Cup destinations and football fans around the globe hope that Lynch will be instrumental in cleaning up the game to make it beautiful once more.

Unfortunately the case is likely to drag on for years as Fifa may have the same ability to fight back as the banks – so far the only institutions that Lynch has failed to hold properly to account.

She has been criticised for agreeing to fines instead of jail terms for those involved in financial irregularities and it is all too possible that Fifa could prove to be just as slippery.