Spain soccer official arrested in yet another match-fixing scandal

MADRID The executive who oversaw Spain’s rise to dominate world soccer in recent years was arrested Tuesday in an anticorruption investigation, dealing yet another blow to the sport’s already-tarnished image.

Angel Maria Villar, his son, Gorka Villar, and two other soccer officials were detained while raids were conducted at the federation headquarters and other properties, the state prosecutor and Spanish police said.

The elder Villar, who has led the Spanish Football Federation for three decades and is the senior vice-president of FIFA and a vice-president for the European football organization, is suspected of having arranged matches for Spain that led to business deals benefiting his son, said the office of the state prosecutor in charge of anti-corruption.

Angel Maria Villar is a longtime power broker in football both inside and beyond Spain’s borders, and he was singled out for questionable conduct in the 2014 FIFA report on the World Cup bidding process that rocked the sport.

A 2015 U.S. investigation into corruption in world soccer led to the eventual resignation of longtime president Sepp Blatter and other top officials.

Several hours after Tuesday’s arrests, police escorted Villar into the federation offices in Las Rozas, on the outskirts of Madrid. He emerged from a Guardia Civil vehicle flanked by two uniformed agents. Two policemen guarded the entrance to the federation offices near the training grounds for Spain’s national teams.

Also arrested were Juan Padron, the federation’s vice-president of economic affairs who is also president of the regional federation for Tenerife, and Ramon Hernandez, the secretary of that regional federation.