The trial of three former high-ranking South American football figures starts this week in New York but US authorities have already secured 23 guilty pleas
On Monday in a spartan Brooklyn courtroom, three former South American football chiefs accused of taking bribes and corruption will finally reach criminal trial, two and a half years on from the arrests in Zurich of Fifa barons that led to the toppling of Sepp Blatter’s regime. The three denying charges that include racketeering and “multiple acts involving bribery” over the sale of Copa América and other television rights are José Maria Marin, former president of the Brazil football association (CBF); Juan Ángel Napout, a Paraguayan who used to be president of the South America football confederation (Conmebol); and Manuel Burga, president of the Peru FA for 12 years and a member of Fifa’s money-dispensing development committee.
Substantial figures as they are, much more significant when assessing the impact of the US investigation into Fifa is to consider the former masters of the football universe who have already pleaded guilty, and the others charged but opposing extradition.
The latest to-do list for the presiding judge, Pamela Chen, states that 23 former football administrators and marketing executives have admitted guilt to crimes of financial corruption. They include Jeffrey Webb, who was president of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Football Associations (Concacaf); Costas Takkas, one of Webb’s fixers; Alfredo Hawit, who took a $250,000 bribe when he was the interim Concacaf president; and two sons of Jack Warner, the long-term Concacaf president, who is also charged with serial corruption.
The guilty plea dramatically unsealed last Monday from the FBI’s investigation into the alleged links of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign with Russia carried the hallmarks of the methods that unearthed the corrupt Fifa panjandrums. When the seven executives were hauled out of their beds in Zurich’s five-star Baur au Lac hotel and accused of the “World Cup of fraud”, the US Department of Justice revealed that one baron at the heart of it all, Charles “Chuck” Blazer, had already pleaded guilty.
The American’s flip from Fifa powerbroker to admitted fraudster and informer echoes that of George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign foreign affairs adviser revealed to have pleaded guilty to lying, who is now believed to have worn a wire since in conversations with associates. The exploration by the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice of endemic corruption in football followed the template now believed to be operating in the presidential investigation. They pinned Blazer with his undeniable guilt, secured his agreement to inform on others, then moved on to those whose names he sang. Investigators followed the evidence, and the money, secured more guilty pleas and informants, and proceeded to the next targets.
One crucial witness for the ultimate compiling of an indictment against 27 defendants, a who’s who of football potentates in the Americas, was clearly José Hawilla, the former president of Traffic, a prominent marketing company based in Brazil. Traffic was famed for having brokered a $160m deal in 1996 for Nike to sponsor the Brazil national team for 10 years. In his admission of guilt, Hawilla told the authorities he paid a kickback of $20m to Ricardo Teixeira, the long-term CBF president and a member of Fifa’s executive committee.
Hawilla, who awaits sentencing, illuminated in his guilty plea the culture of entitlement that had enveloped the heights of world football administration. He said he started Traffic as a legitimate company, buying South American football TV rights and selling them to broadcasters. But then the Paraguayan Nicolás Leoz, another of Fifa’s most powerful chiefs, president of Conmebol from 1986 to 2013, demanded the first bribe as long ago as 1991: “Leoz told Hawilla … that Hawilla would make a lot of money from the rights he was acquiring,” the indictment stated. “Leoz did not think it was fair that he did not also make money. Leoz told Hawilla that he would only sign the contract if Hawilla agreed to pay him a bribe.”