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 Court documents showed that the heads of the CONMEBOL and CONCACAF
associations that run soccer in the Western Hemisphere and others
with top jobs in the world governing body FIFA were charged along
with current and former chiefs of the Brazil Football Confederation
(CBF), which hosted the 2014 World Cup finals.
A former president of Honduras, Rafael Callejas, and a judge on
Guatemala's constitutional court, Héctor Trujillo, were named in the
indictment. A source in the court said Trujillo was on vacation in
the United States. Callejas, also a former Honduran soccer
federation chief, said he was ready to defend himself in court.
CONCACAF acting president Alfredo Hawit of Honduras, a vice
president of FIFA, and CONMEBOL head Juan Angel Napout of Paraguay
were arrested in a pre-dawn raid by Swiss police at a hotel in
Zurich near the headquarters of FIFA, which has been in turmoil
since a first round of indictments and arrests last May.
Hawit was appointed by the Confederation of North, Central America
and the Caribbean Association Football to replace Jeffrey Webb of
the Cayman Islands who was himself arrested in Zurich in May. Webb,
a former FIFA vice president, pleaded guilty last month to
racketeering and other charges and agreed to forfeit $7.6 million,
prosecutors said on Thursday.
A total of eight people had agreed to plead guilty since May, U.S.
authorities said, pointing to progress in the investigation.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a news conference in
Washington that corruption had become deeply ingrained in the
business of soccer.
She said "the betrayal of trust that is set forth here is truly
outrageous, and the scale of corruption alleged herein is
unconscionable."
For others who remain "in the shadows" of soccer, Lynch said, the
message is: "You will not wait us out, and you will not escape our
focus."
The United States is a member of CONCACAF and it was a longtime
American soccer official, Chuck Blazer, who became an important
cooperating witness after secretly pleading guilty in 2013 to
criminal charges. Blazer was once CONCACAF general secretary and a
former FIFA executive committee member.
The United States Soccer Federation said in a statement on the new
charges that its hosting of the 2016 Copa America Centenario
tournament would go ahead as planned. It said a committee created to
govern the tournament "does not include these individuals and they
were never in a position to make decisions that would adversely
impact" the competition.
BRAZILIANS CHARGED
The new indictment identified Brazil Football Confederation chief
Marco Polo del Nero and former CBF head Ricardo Teixeira in the list
of defendants, both former FIFA executive committee members.
Teixeira is the former son-in-law of longtime FIFA president Joao
Havelange. In 2012, Swiss prosecutors said Teixeira and Havelange
took millions of dollars in bribes in the awarding of marketing
rights for World Cup finals tournaments.
The Justice Department said that the new charges bring the total
number of people and entities charged to 41. The soccer officials
were charged with running schemes designed to solicit and receive
more than $200 million in bribes and kickbacks to sell media and
marketing rights for soccer tournaments and matches.
Ironically, a FIFA executive committee approval of a package of
reforms in Zurich to clean up the scandalized organization was
overshadowed by the arrests and new charges.
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The former head of Panama's federation, Ariel Alvarado, was among
those charged, according to the indictment, as was Reynaldo Vasquez,
former soccer federation president of El Salvador. Alvarado served
on the executive committee of CONCACAF and on FIFA's disciplinary
committee.
Alvarado said in a statement later on Thursday that he is "convinced
that every one of the charges against me will be cleared up."
Argentine nationals Jose Luis Meiszner and Eduardo Deluca, current
and former secretary generals of South America's confederation, were
also charged, along with officials from Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia's
Romer Osuna, member of the FIFA audit and compliance panel and
former CONMEBOL treasurer.
CONMEBOL said it would "continue co-operating at all times with the
investigation of authorities, and will continue deepening
administrative reforms..."
In a similar statement, CONCACAF said the developments strengthened
its "resolve in continuing to enact significant structural and
governance changes..."
FIFA said it would continue to cooperate fully with U.S. and Swiss
justice authorities.
MIAMI RAID
In Miami on Thursday, FBI agents searched the office of Media World,
an affiliate of Spanish media giant Imagina Group. Media World was
one of the unidentified sports marketing companies mentioned in a
U.S. indictment in May as having agreed to pay a bribe to a
high-ranking soccer official in the Americas, sources told Reuters
in July.
Imagina said in a statement it was cooperating.
The raid on the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich echoed arrests at the
same place in May that plunged FIFA into crisis. The avalanche of
corruption allegations prompted FIFA President Sepp Blatter to say
he would resign, only days after being re-elected to a fifth term.
Blatter, his deputy Jerome Valcke and European soccer boss Michel
Platini have all been suspended by an internal ethics watchdog. None
of them has been charged with a crime, and all deny any wrongdoing.
Leading FIFA sponsors Anheuser-Busch InBev NV <ABI.BR>, Adidas
<ADSGn.DE>, Coca-Cola <KO.N>, McDonald's Corp <MCD.N> and Visa Inc
<V.N> on Tuesday published an open letter demanding independent
oversight of the reform process.
In parallel investigations, Swiss and U.S. authorities are focusing
on whether certain business contracts or the World Cup hosting
rights for 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar were won with the help
of bribery.
(Additional reporting by Michael Shields and Brian Homewood in
Zurich, Mica Rosenberg and David Ingram in New York, Sarah N. Lynch
in Washington, Ben Gruber in Miami and Elida Moreno in Panama City;
Editing by Kevin Liffey and Grant McCool)
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