More arrests as FIFA crisis escalates
Swiss police have arrested the two top soccer bosses in the Americas on suspicion of taking millions of dollars in bribes linked to television rights.
Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice (FOJ) named the men as Alfredo Hawit of Honduras, acting president of the CONCACAF region and a FIFA vice president, and Juan Angel Napout of Paraguay, head of the South American soccer federation CONMEBOL. CONCACAF administers soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean.
Miguel Angel Napout holds the Copa Libertadores trophy in August. Photo: AFP / JUAN MABROMATA
The officials were detained in pre-dawn raids at the behest of the US Department of Justice.
The FOJ said it would ask the United States to submit a formal extradition request within 40 days, which both men have said they will resist.
The FOJ said the allegations were that they took money “in return for selling marketing rights in connection with football tournaments in Latin America, as well as World Cup qualifying matches”.
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In the US, a law enforcement source said authorities would name 16 new defendants in an indictment set to be made public by the Justice Department.
The source said the people were mainly from the Western Hemisphere and that the indictment deals in part with allegations of corruption in the award of broadcast rights for soccer.
Among those expected to be charged include Brazil’s soccer chief Marco Polo del Nero and its ex-soccer chief Ricardo Teixeira, a FIFA source said.
The investigation also unfolded in Miami, where FBI agents searched the office of Media World, an affiliate of Spanish media giant Imagina Group, a source familiar with the matter said.
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Media World was one of the unidentified sports marketing companies mentioned in a US 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 Group said in a statement that it would dismiss any person who may have committed illegal acts if there were sufficient evidence.
The raid on the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich echoed arrests at the same place in May that plunged FIFA into crisis.
Since then, FIFA’s veteran president Sepp Blatter has announced his resignation, he and other officials have been suspended, and a host of criminal probes into FIFA officials have begun, triggering huge external pressure for deep reforms.
The past two CONCACAF heads before Hawit have both been indicted by US authorities.
When he was named head of the confederation in May, he said he was “profoundly disappointed by the allegations made by authorities that again, CONCACAF has been the victim of fraud”.
-Joshua Franklin and David Ingram, Reuters
