December 12, 2024 09:49 (IST)
Follow us:
facebook-white sharing button
twitter-white sharing button
instagram-white sharing button
youtube-white sharing button
Congress wants to deviate the issue of Sonia Gandhi-George Soros link: JP Nadda | Bengaluru techie suicide: Atul Subhash's family demanded Rs. 10 lakh as dowry leading to my father's death, claims estranged wife | Syria rebels torch tomb of ousted president Bashar al-Assad's father | Donald Trump vows to eliminate birthright citizenship after taking charge | No alliance with Congress in Delhi polls: AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal | Bengaluru techie's suicide: Atul Subhash's wife and her family booked | Bengaluru techie's suicide: Atul Subhash's wife and her family booked | INDIA bloc to knock on Supreme Court's doors over alleged EVM manipulation during Maharashtra polls | 'Babri Masjid should be rebuilt in Bengal's Murshidabad': TMC MLA Humayun Kabir sparks row | Rajnath Singh calls on Russian Prez Vladimir Putin in Moscow, discusses bilateral defence cooperation
Wikimedia Commons

Officials took bribes for Qatar World Cup bid, say US prosecutors

| @indiablooms | Apr 07, 2020, at 05:22 pm

New York/Xinhua/UNI: Former Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) president Ricardo Teixeira was among several officials to accept bribes in Qatar's bid to host the 2022 World Cup, according to an indictment made public in a U S court on Monday.

The late, former South American football bosses Nicolas Leoz and Julio Grondona also allegedly received payments to vote for Qatar's candidacy at a 2010 FIFA executive meeting.

Documents lodged with the U.S. District Court of Brooklyn did not say where the money came from.

FIFA handed Teixeira a lifetime ban last November for taking millions of dollars of bribes linked to commercial contracts for South American competitions from 2006 to 2012. He was also fined one million Swiss francs (around one million U.S. dollars).

In a recent interview with CNN Brasil, Teixeira proclaimed his innocence and accused the US of "persecution" for having voted for Qatar instead of the United States.

Former South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) chief Leoz died of heart failure last year. Grondona, who led the Argentinian Football Association for 35 years, died of complications related to an aortic aneurysm in 2014.

In the indictment, the US justice department also accused Jack Warner, the former president of the North American, Central American and Caribbean Football Federation (CONCACAF), of receiving five million U.S. dollars in bribes to vote for Russia to host the 2018 World Cup.

In addition, the Guatemala federation president, Rafael Salguero, voted for Russia in exchange for a one million U.S. dollar bribe, according to the indictment.

William F. Sweeney Jr, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York field office, described corruption in international football as "deep-seated" and a common practice for decades.

"The defendants and their co-conspirators corrupted the governance and business of international soccer with bribes and kickbacks, and engaged in criminal fraudulent schemes that caused significant harm to the sport of soccer," he said in a statement.

Scores of former high-ranking football officials have been arrested since the US justice department launched its sprawling corruption probe in 2015.  

Support Our Journalism

We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism

IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.

Support objective journalism for a small contribution.