Who are the two officials?
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He’s one of eight former football leaders to plead guilty as part of a worldwide corruption probe surrounding football. “You will not escape our focus”, said Lynch. Prosecutors said there was an argument over the failure of Fabio Tordin, a marketing executive who has pleaded guilty, to pay a $5,000 bribe to a Salvadoran soccer official as part of El Salvador’s appearance at an exhibition game in Washington, D.C., this spring.
Webb is the suspended President of the Cayman Islands Football Association (CIFA) and the former President of CONCACAF and a former FIFA Vice President. He agreed to forfeit more than $6.7 million.
The indicted also included Ariel Alvarado, a Panamanian official who now sits on FIFA’s disciplinary committee.
The United States is accusing the two of accepting bribes of millions of dollars linked to marketing rights for Copa America and World Cup qualifying matches.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said huge sums were involved.
Napout and Hawit were later handed provisional bans from football.
Sixteen more top football officials were charged in a dramatic widening of the FIFA corruption scandal on Thursday, as United States prosecutors vowed to leave no stone unturned in their quest to root out graft.
Fifa vice presidents Juan Angel Napout and Alfredo Hawit have been banned from football after being indicted on bribery and racketeering charges.
The head of the reform effort, Francois Carrard, told journalists that the measures offered Federation Internationale de Football Association an opportunity “to renew itself”.
Also last month, the president of the Colombian Football Federation, Luis Bedoya, resigned unexpectedly as a government source said Bedoya had flown to NY.
The pair, presidents of CONCACAF and CONMEBOL respectively, are both FIFA vice-presidents and were taken into custody by Swiss police following drawn raids at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, where the Executive Committee of world football’s governing body met on Thursday.
The two men arrested Thursday face police hearings later in the day to consider the requests from American law enforcement agencies ahead of extradition proceedings.
The body s long-time president Sepp Blatter, the subject of criminal investigation in Switzerland, has been suspended for 90-days and is facing tougher punishment by FIFA s internal ethics watchdog.
The Swiss Federal Office of Justice, FOJ, said the arrests were carried out by Swiss authorities in the context of a U.S.-led investigation on charges of racketeering, money laundering and fraud.
The Swiss authorities are probing the ruling body in a separate investigation which centres on the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. A reform committee was formed.
In October, Carrard s reform panel proposed limiting president terms at 12 years and barring those over 74 from serving on the executive. “It is also an eye opener to everyone that such greed and corruption could be hiding in plain sight within the world’s most popular sport”.
The plan has not yet been approved by the executive committee and remains under review.
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Acting FIFA President Issa Hayatou says the arrests are evidence of a need for organisational change.
