In May, seven Federation Internationale de Football Association officials, including two vice presidents, were arrested at the same hotel at the request of a United States investigation into corruption, as the organisation was engulfed by claims of widespread wrongdoing.
Advertisement
Per BBC Sport, Hawit and Napout were apprehended in a “dawn raid” on suspicion of corruption-that is, “accepting millions of dollars” of bribe money-and along with 14 other officials were charged on Thursday by the American authorities investigating the allegations surrounding football’s governing body.
“The betrayal of trust is truly outrageous”, said U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch in a report by The Evening Standard.
Officers raided Media World, which allegedly paid bribes in connection with FIFA’s deepening corruption scandal.
“And the message from this announcement should be clear to every culpable individual who remains in the shadows, hoping to evade our investigation: you will not wait us out; you will not escape our focus”.
Also charged yesterday were former Panama Football Federation chief, Ariel Alvarado; former president of Honduras and football federation head, Rafael Callejas; current Guatemala football president, Brayan Jimenez; former Guatemala football head, Rafael Salguero; current Guatemala football general secretary, Hector Trujillo who is also a judge; and Reynaldo Vasquez, a former Salvadoran football chief.
Blatter attends a press conference at the Extraordinary FIFA Executive Committee Meeting at the FIFA headquarters on July 20, 2015 in Zurich, Switzerland.
His would-be successor, UEFA boss Michel Platini, is implicated in the same probe and will appear later this month before a FIFA ethics court that could ban him from football for life, a fate which may also await Blatter.
It said that Honduras’ Hawit and Paraguay’s Napout “are opposing their extradition” and Swiss would now request formal extradition requests from the U.S. “The convicted defendants have agreed to pay more than $190 million in forfeiture”, Lynch said on Friday. Ricardo Teixeira (Brazil). President of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) from 1989 to 2012 and a former FIFA executive committee member, Teixeira received bribes for the sale of television rights for the Copa Brasil tournament from 1990 to 2009. In an earlier exchange, he said he supported the USA investigation “from Day One”.
Blatter was re-elected as president for a fifth term but said on June 2 he would step down at an extraordinary congress on February 26, when the reform package is also to be approved for good. Of those, 12 individuals and two sports companies have been convicted. Both have already been suspended by FIFA following internal investigations and Swiss authorities have opened their own criminal inquiry into Blatter’s conduct.
Advertisement
But executive committee member Wolfgan Niersbach said the body had failed to agree on the matter, putting the decision off until a later date. “There are lots of people in Federation Internationale de Football Association for more than 20 or 30 years that have not been accused of anything”.
