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A Brazilian prosecutor is to open an investigation this week examining FIFA's role in ticket touting at the World Cup. Marcos Kac is to enlist the help of Interpol and foreign police forces to investigate the source of the thousands of tickets for the tournament that were sold on the black market. The prosecutor is hoping to identify the original source of the tickets and open fresh inquiries into tax evasion and money laundering. "This next part of the investigation will be huge," Kac is quoted as saying by the Sunday Times. "We will need the assistance of foreign police and Interpol. We are going to get to the bottom of it and everybody involved." Ray Whelan, a senior director for MATCH Hospitality -- FIFA's official ticket and hospitality partner -- was at the centre of the initial investigation and is currently on the run after being bugged by police negotiating a $600,000 cash deal with a ticket tout. Police have already said they consider that "someone from FIFA" and "an intermediary" from MATCH had channelled tickets into the black market. Detectives now want to establish if any FIFA officials were aware of the black market deals. According to the Sunday Times, police have 22,000 hours of telephone intercepts, including calls between an alleged ringleader of the black market racket and Zurich, the location of FIFA's headquarters.
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