Fifa exco members took bribes for Qatar World Cup votes, US prosecutors allege

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/apr/07/fifa-exco-members-took-bribes-for-qatar-world-cup-votes-us-prosecutors-allege

Fifa exco members took bribes for Qatar World Cup votes, US prosecutors allege

Associated Press

Published on Mon 6 Apr 2020 19.38 EDT

Prosecutors in New York have revealed new details of alleged bribes paid to Fifa executive committee members to gain their votes for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup. An indictment unsealed on Monday in the US District Court in Brooklyn says Nicolás Leoz, the Paraguayan then president of the South American governing body, Conmebol, and the former Brazil federation president Ricardo Teixeira received bribes to vote for Qatar at the 2010 Fifa executive committee meeting.

Jack Warner, the former president of Concacaf, the governing body for North and Central America, is said to have received $5m in bribes to vote for Russia to host in 2018. The money allegedly came from 10 different shell companies, including entities in Anguilla, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands.

The Guatemala federation president, Rafael Salguero, was also promised a $1m bribe to vote for Russia, according to the indictment. Leoz, who died last August, avoided extradition, as have Warner, from Trinidad & Tobago, and Teixeira. Salguero pleaded guilty in 2018 to two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, and one count each of racketeering conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.

Alejandro Burzaco, the Argentinian former head of the marketing company Torneos y Competencias, testified in 2017 that all three South Americans on the Fifa executive committee took million-dollar bribes to support Qatar, which beat the US in the final vote.
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