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 A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that
Héctor Trujillo, 62, was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border
Protection agents who went to his cabin door. Trujillo was on a
Disney cruise ship docked at Port Canaveral, Florida, when he was
arrested, another law enforcement source said.
Trujillo, one of 41 people and entities charged in a U.S. corruption
sweep that has rocked soccer worldwide, appeared in federal court in
Orlando, Florida. A magistrate judge ordered him held pending his
transfer to Brooklyn, New York, where the cases against officials
were first brought, and a possible bond hearing to be held there.
His family, including a son wearing a 2014 FIFA World Cup T-shirt,
looked on as Trujillo was read his rights through an interpreter.
Trujillo's wrists and ankles were shackled.
Soccer bosses from across South and Central America, including
Trujillo, were among 16 people charged on Thursday by U.S.
prosecutors with bribery and kickback schemes amounting to more than
$200 million for marketing and broadcast rights to tournaments and
matches. The total number of indictments is now 41 in a probe
spanning dozens of countries.
FIFA is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis with criminal
investigations into the sport under way in the United States and
Switzerland. Its president Sepp Blatter is among officials who have
been suspended by its own ethics committee.
At FIFA headquarters in Zurich on Friday, FIFA executive committee
members Juan Angel Napout of Paraguay and Alfredo Hawit of Honduras
were suspended from soccer for 90 days after their arrests at hotel
in the city on Thursday morning.
Ironically, the pair traveled to Switzerland to attend an executive
committee meeting to discuss reforms, and seven months after a first
round of arrests and charges.
Napout is president of the South American Football Confederation
(CONMEBOL) and Hawit is head of the CONCACAF confederation that runs
the sport in North, Central America and the Caribbean.
On Friday, CONCACAF provisionally banned Trujillo and six other
officials who have been indicted, including their interim president
Alfredo Hawit of Honduras, from "all football related activities".
At a news conference in Washington on Thursday, U.S. Attorney
General Loretta Lynch said the corruption allegations against
Trujillo presented a contradiction with his position as a judge on
Guatemala's top court.
Trujillo, the secretary general of the Guatemalan soccer federation,
was "purportedly dispensing justice by day while allegedly
soliciting bribes and selling his influence within FIFA," Lynch
said.
'SIX-FIGURE BRIBE'
The indictment charged him with soliciting and accepting two bribe
payments from Media World, an affiliate of Spanish media company
Imagina Group. One payment was a "six-figure bribe" to be split
among Trujillo and two other Guatemalans for media and marketing
rights for 2018 World Cup qualifier matches, the indictment said.
The two other men, Brayan Jimenez and Rafael Salguero, were also
indicted. Jimenez has served as president of Guatemala's soccer
federation, and Salguero is a former FIFA executive committee
member.
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Guatemala's prosecutor's office said it had received an order from
the foreign ministry to proceed with the extradition of Jimenez to
the United States, and had released an arrest warrant for him.
Journalists gathered outside the headquarters of the soccer
federation, where they believed he was holed up.
The second payment was a $200,000 bribe that Trujillo and Jimenez
split in exchange for media and marketing rights to 2022 World Cup
qualifier matches, the indictment said. Meetings about the bribes
took place in Miami.
At a meeting in Chicago on July 9, weeks after a first round of
soccer-related arrests, Trujillo openly discussed how he hid the
bribe payments, the indictment said. Trujillo said at the meeting
"that he did not think the payment would appear suspicious, as a
sham contract had been created," the court document said.
Thursday's arrests and charges overshadowed the FIFA executive
committee's approval the same day of a package of reforms to clean
up the scandal-ridden organization. There was more concern for FIFA
on Friday when Europe's powerful clubs criticized the reforms.
The European Club Association, which represents more than 200 clubs
including big names such as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern
Munich, said members were "not prepared to be further ignored" after
they were not involved in the FIFA Reform Committee.
Also on Friday, one person was detained and the accounts of three
members of Ecuador's football federation, including president Luis
Chiriboga, were frozen by the country's state prosecutor on Friday
as part of the U.S. investigation. Chiriboga was among those charged
on Thursday.
In Madrid, Imagina Group suspended chief executive Roger Huguet and
another executive, Fabio Tordin, at its Media World Sports
affiliate. Imagina Group said in a statement that it would cooperate
fully with U.S. judicial authorities.
Nike Inc was another company that said it was cooperating with
authorities over a 1996 sports marketing contract with Brazil. Top
Brazilian soccer officials were among those named in the indictment
on Thursday with the bribery and kickback schemes.
"There is no allegation in court documents that any employee was
aware of or knowingly participated in any bribery scheme," Nike said
in a statement.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York and Mark Hosenball in
Washington; Additional reporting by Brian Homewood in Zurich, David
Ingram in New York, Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City, Adrian Croft in
Madrid, Barbara Liston in Orlando, Florida, and Simon Evans in
Singapore; Writing and editing by Grant McCool)
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