UNDERWAY

body in one of the premier football-playing nations in the world.

Also in the dock is former Fifa vice president Juan Angel Napout, 59, and Manuel Burga, who led soccer in Peru until 2014 and once served as a Fifa development committee member.

If convicted by the jury, they will be sentenced by Judge Pamela Chen. The most serious counts each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years.

Twenty-four others have already pleaded guilty. The rest remain in their own countries, fighting extradition or similar charges at home.

The hugely complicated trial, expected to last weeks if not months, will see prosecutors expected to present 350,000 pages of evidence and dozens of witnesses. Opening statements are expected to start on Monday (Nov 13).

But first jury selection will take place from a pool of around 200 potential jurors, who have been kept in semi-secluded anonymity following documented attempts at intimidation, an AFP reporter said.

The trial is being held in a ceremonial courtroom closed to the press.

“Two generations of soccer officials,” then attorney general Loretta Lynch said in May 2015, “used their positions of trust within their respective organisations to solicit bribes from sports marketers in exchange for the commercial rights to their soccer tournaments. They did this over and over, year after year, tournament after tournament.”

Tens of millions of dollars were hidden in offshore accounts in Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, US officials said.

Chen last month sentenced the first two of those who have pleaded guilty, jailing Guatemalan ex-soccer official Hector Trujillo to eight months and British-Greek accountant Costas Takkas to 15 months.

The other 22 await sentencing, led by Jeffrey Webb, of the Cayman Islands, who admitted to receiving more than $6 million (RM25.3 million) in bribes .

While the US investigation did not indict ex-Fifa president Sepp Blatter, he was thrown out of the sport in 2015 after Fifa’s ethics committee found him guilty of accepting an improper $2.1 million (RM8.9 million) payment from then-Uefa chief Michel Platini.

Blatter was banned from soccer for six years, and Platini, his former heir apparent, for four years. AFP