Sports
Ex- FIFA Vice President admits receiving bribes
Former head of South America’s Conmebol football body Eugenio Figueredo has admitted he received bribes from television firms in exchange for maintaining media rights, a lawyer involved in the case in Uruguay said on Sunday.
Conmebol, an influential grouping that includes traditional football powers such as Brazil and Argentina, is heavily embroiled in a worldwide football corruption probe led by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Figueredo arrived back to his native Uruguay on Friday after being extradited on corruption charges from Switzerland, where he was arrested in May. On Saturday, the 83-year-old former vice-president of world football federation FIFA was moved to hospital from prison due to chest pain.
Read also: CAF celebrates African players in Europe
Pablo Barreiro, the lawyer representing Uruguay’s footballers’ union which laid corruption charges against Figueredo in 2013, said he had admitted that the heads of South America’s various football associations received important sums of money in exchange for the media rights to tournaments.
“This is the flow of money that the prosecutor … understands constituted money laundering and essentially fraud,” Barreiro said. Figueredo’s own lawyer was not immediately available for comment.
Of 14 football officials and sports marketing executives indicted in the United States in May on bribery, money laundering and wire fraud charges involving more than US$150 million (NZ$219 million) in payments, eight were from South America.
They included two former Conmebol presidents, Figueredo and Nicolas Leoz, as well as the Venezuelan federation president Rafael Esquivel, the former head of the Brazilian confederation and three Argentine and one Brazilian executive.
RipplesNigeria …without borders, without fears
Join the conversation
Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism
Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.
As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.
If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.
Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.
INVESTIGATION: In Kwara, multimillion-naira milk processing plant is abandoned, converted to a chicken outlet
After the government spent millions of naira to establish a milk processing plant in Kwara State that would provided jobs...
SPECIAL REPORT: For Sokoto communities, promise of healthcare is akin to death sentence
In this story, ABDULRASHEED HAMMAD delves into the dire realities of Primary Health Care services in Sokoto State, shedding light...
ICYMI…SPECIAL REPORT: NNPCL hides behind PIA to frustrate disclosure, accountability
Nigeria’s major oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), in what appears to be a common practice of disregard...
INVESTIGATION: Multi-million naira Ekiti resort center remains uncompleted a decade after
The multimillion-naira project, expected to comprise recreational buildings, now consists of cassava farmland, a bush used for excretion, and a...
SPECIAL REPORT: Torturous experiences of students with disabilities in Oyo tertiary institutions
For students with disabilities in Oyo state-owned tertiary institutions, learning is a torturous and distressing experience, considering the building structures...