Reats: Corrupt world of FIFA
former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, dealt with the now-defunct government programme Futbol para Todos (Football for All), which broadcast local soccer matches on public television. Burzaco implicated Delhon in taking bribes.
POLITICAL LINKS
The close ties in South America among lawmakers, judges and soccer leaders are becoming clearer.
In a series of WhatsApp messages detailed in court last Wednesday, Napout revealed his links to the current President of Paraguay, Horacio Cartes.
Napout passed on to Burzaco a request from Cartes’ private office to buy eight tickets for Argentina’s game against Iran at the 2014 World Cup. Around that time, Napout also noted CONMEBOL had been in a legal case with a businessman and that Cartes “resolved the entire trial and did it all because of me.”
Cartes also advised Napout to “stay close” to Grondona of Argentina to fulfil his ambition to lead CONMEBOL, the What- sApp messages revealed.
When Argentina reached the semifinals, Napout asked Burzaco to get four tickets for Paraguay’s attorney general to buy. In a WhatsApp message, Napout tells Burzaco: “We have a trial over there. There are two judges mad because I refused [to get tickets].”
CURRENT OFFICIALS
The desire by FIFA to characterise the trial as dealing with officials long banished from world soccer is made harder when officials currently influential in the game are mentioned in court.
FIFA’s current finance committee chairman, Alejandro Dominguez, was referred to during the trial on Wednesday as “not a very successful businessman [who] will probably request” a bribe.
Burzaco, the prosecution’s star witness, said he was told this about Dominguez by Napout in early 2015. Napout is a Paraguayan like Dominguez, and his predecessor as CONMEBOL leader.
Under current FIFA president Gianni Infantino, Dominguez is a key ally in Zurich as one of FIFA’s eight vice presidents, and was rewarded with being made chairman of the finance panel.
Among many soccer officials whose photographs Burzaco was asked by prosecutors to identify on Tuesday were Sunil Gulati, the most influential American at FIFA, and Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Qatari who heads French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain and broadcaster beIN Sports. Al-Khelaifi is under criminal investigation in Switzerland for suspected bribery linked to FIFA awarding beIN broadcast rights to the 2026 and 2030 World Cups.
The US has not accused Gulati or Al-Khelaifi of any offences.
EVADING JUSTICE
Several soccer officials indicted in 2015 are absent from court as they fight extradition to the United States:
— Jack Warner (Trinidad and Tobago): Charged in May 2015, four years after quitting as a FIFA vice president to avoid sanctions in the bribery case connected to a presidential election. Later banned for life by FIFA for mis- conduct during the 2018-2022 World Cup bidding process.
— Marco Polo del Nero (Brazil): Despite being charged with corruption, remains president of the Brazilian federation and met with FIFA’s Infantino during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Del Nero fled Zurich in May 2015 when FIFA colleagues were arrested, quit the executive committee after missing meetings and was then indicted in the US in December 2015.
— Nicolas Leoz (Paraguay): President of CONMEBOL from 1986 to 2013, when he resigned for receiving $130,000 in payments from a former FIFA marketing partner. Wanted in the US on charges of receiving millions of dollars in bribes linked to marketing and television contracts, Leoz’s extradition was finally approved by a judge in Paraguay last week just as the FIFA trial was getting underway in Brooklyn.
— Ricardo Teixeira (Brazil): A former son-in-law of Joao Havelange, FIFA’s president between 1974 and 1998, Teixeira quit as Brazilian federation head and a FIFA executive committee member in 2012 as corruption allegations mounted.