Venerable Five-Star Hotel Is Unlikely Setting for a Raid

The lobby of the Baur au Lac, a 171-year-old five-star hotel, was serene in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Bundles of newspapers were tossed on the front doorstep. A cleaner wearing a black uniform buffed the marble floors. The concierge fielded a call from a guest asking whether a local pharmacy could deliver medicine.

Then, when its Swiss clocks struck 6, more than a dozen law enforcement officers in street clothes entered without a fuss through a revolving door at the front of the hotel. They headed straight to the front desk, where they presented government documents and demanded the room numbers of some of the highest-profile officials in soccer, who were staying at the hotel ahead of the annual meeting of FIFA, the sport's global governing body.

Suddenly, the venerable Baur au Lac, a downtown way station for musicians, artists and royalty - and, the hotel says, the place where the Nobel Peace Prize was born - was transformed into something akin to a crime scene. The concierge was instructed to call one executive's room, and one of the most significant takedowns in international sports history was underway.

"Sir," the concierge said in English, "I'm just calling you to say that we're going to need you to come to your door and open it for us or we're going to have to kick it in."

The hotel, which overlooks Lake Zurich, provided an unlikely setting for the apprehension of six global soccer executives who were arrested on corruption charges and now face extradition to the United States. The operation took less than two hours and was strikingly peaceful - no handcuffs, no guns drawn.

Raids in the United States can be led by armed SWAT team members wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, but the Swiss took a more subtle approach. Rather than storming the executives' rooms and hauling them out in their pajamas, the officers waited for the men to come to the door and then gave them a chance to get dressed and pack their bags.

The officers appeared to lead the officials out one by one, through several exits, including a side door, the hotel's garage and, in one case, the main entrance.

One executive, Eduardo Li, the president of Costa Rica's soccer federation, was staying on the fourth floor, his room just off the hotel's central spiral staircase. Two officers knocked on his door. Once Li appeared, the officers did not seek to restrain him, and he was allowed to bring a bag of personal belongings with him as they escorted him to the elevator. The bag he chose was adorned with FIFA logos.

Li, who was set to officially join FIFA's powerful executive committee this weekend, went peacefully, and the entire sequence was so low-key that a guest in a room next door might easily have slept through the events.

After directing Li through the bowels of the hotel, the officials led him out a side door that opened onto a narrow street. Hotel staff members wearing suit coats with tails were there to meet him, holding up white bedsheets in an effort to obscure the view of curious pedestrians or members of the news media. He was hustled into a waiting hatchback car - not a marked police vehicle - that drove through a red light as it pulled away from the curb.

Shortly after, another official was quietly led out of the lobby. He and his escorts passed by a large oil painting and two tapestries hanging from the wall as hotel cleaning crews polished chandeliers and vacuumed in the background. The executive pulled his luggage behind him while the officers carried two plastic bags that appeared to contain evidence.

While the arrests went seamlessly, chaos ensued at the Baur au Lac's front desk. Just minutes after news of the operation broke, the phone began to ring incessantly. At the same time, the officers began returning to the front desk to ask for access to other parts of the hotel.

"Sir, we don't have any information - please call later," the concierge said to a caller before slamming the phone down.

At one point, a soccer official - who was not being arrested - scurried into the lobby wearing pants, an oxford shirt and the white terry cloth slippers provided to hotel guests. The official spoke briefly with a clerk at the front desk before darting back to his room.

After the arrests were completed, a hulking man in a suit arrived at the front desk. He asked if anyone knew the whereabouts of one of the FIFA executives.

"His wife doesn't know what to do or where he is," the man said.

By 9 a.m., the hotel, which had hosted a wedding the night before, was blanketed by private security guards. Outside, reporters gathered and set up cameras for live television shots.

Inside, the wives and girlfriends of the men who had been arrested sat together in an ornate lounge off the main foyer. The women crowded around a computer and watched an Internet stream of Walter de Gregorio, FIFA's chief spokesman, as he addressed a news conference at the governing body's headquarters just a few miles down the road.

As de Gregorio spoke about how, in his opinion, this was actually "a good day" for FIFA - because ridding the organization of corruption is a priority - the women leaned closer. One of them began to cry.