Those include Alfredo Hawit and Juan Angel Napout, the current presidents.
Advertisement
SUM, the commercial arm of Major League Soccer, has become the preeminent commercial soccer enterprise in North America, overseeing the marketing, promotion and operational execution of the region’s most successful soccer entities.
“Top Officials Arrested in Pre-Dawn Raid at Zurich Hotel”: “More than a dozen people were expected to be charged, law enforcement officials said, almost doubling the size of an already huge case that has upended Federation Internationale de Football Association, soccer’s multibillion-dollar governing body…” He, his deputy Jerome Valcke and European soccer boss Michel Platini have all been suspended by an internal ethics watchdog.
“Two generations of football officials abused their positions of trust for personal gain, frequently through an alliance of unscrupulous sports marketing executives who shut out competitors and kept highly lucrative contracts for themselves through the systematic payment of bribes and kickbacks”, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. Shortly afterwards, two cars with obscured windows were seen leaving the hotel.
Ironically, a Federation Internationale de Football Association executive committee approval of a package of reforms in Zurich to clean up the scandalized organization was overshadowed by the arrests and new charges.
Acting FIFA president Issa Hayatou called the proposals “a milestone on our path towards restoring FIFA’s credibility as a modern, trusted and professional sports organisation”.
Leading FIFA sponsors Anheuser-Busch InBev NV (ABI.BR), Adidas (ADSGn.DE), Coca-Cola (KO.N), McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N) and Visa Inc (V.N) on Tuesday published an open letter demanding independent oversight of the reform process.
The new indictment identified Brazil Football Confederation chief Marco Polo del Nero and former CBF head Ricardo Teixeira in the list of defendants, both former FIFA executive committee members.
The new accusations follow the earlier USA indictment of 14 soccer officials and business executives, and the guilty pleas of four others – doubling the number of defendants charged in the US, and broadening the biggest crisis in the 111-year history of the sport’s multi-billion-dollar governing body.
In a similar statement, CONCACAF said the developments strengthened its “resolve in continuing to enact significant structural and governance changes…”
Several South American national soccer chiefs have quit their posts.
The choice of Qatar, a small desert state where summer daytime temperatures rarely fall below 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), was especially contentious and went against the advice of FIFA’s own technical committee.
“Finally, also charged are the former presidents of the soccer federations of Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru”.
Advertisement
In Washington DC, Attorney-General Loretta Lynch told reporters the United States would seek the pair’s extradition from Switzerland.
