Charges came after five long weeks of detailed evidence, including devastating testimony from 28 witnesses, against José Maria Marin and Juan Ángel Napout

More than two and a half years after a dawn raid on a hotel in Zurich unveiled the US government’s sprawling investigation into corruption at football’s governing body Fifa, a New York jury on Friday convicted the first sports officials to stand trial.



Fifa trial: two ex-soccer officials found guilty on multiple charges of corruption Read more

It had been five long weeks of detailed evidence in a trial awash with controversy. The jury took five full days to find José Maria Marin, the former head of football in Brazil, and the Paraguayan Juan Angel Napout – the former chief of South American soccer’s governing body (Conmebol) – guilty on most of the charges.

The jury has yet to reach a decision on the fate of Manuel Burga, the third defendant and the former head of football in Peru, who is charged with a single count of racketeering.

The convictions come after more than 40 individuals and entities were indicted by US prosecutors as part of the investigation. About two dozen have already pleaded guilty, with some testifying against their former colleagues during the trial. The investigation remains ongoing as some of the key players in the scandal, involving at least $150m in illicit payments, fight extradition to the US.

The evidence against the three men was so overwhelming it was like torrential rain, said assistant US prosecutor Sam Nitze during his summing up. “In this case it’s a downpour,” he told the jury, urging them to find the three men guilty on an assortment of charges related to the receipt of bribes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marco Polo del Nero, current head of the Brazilian soccer federation, Juan Ángel Napout, former president of South American football’s governing body, Conmebol, José Maria Marin, former president of the Brazilian football federation, and Carlos Chávez, former head of the Bolivian football federation. Photograph: KMace/Handout

The downpour came in the form of devastating testimony from 28 witnesses, who told the jury about meetings, recordings, ledgers and bank records, that implicated the men in a years-long, multimillion-dollar scandal involving the rights to some of South America’s most prestigious football tournaments, including the Copa América and the Copa Libertadores, the region’s premier club competition.

Ledgers, using thinly disguised code names, documented the amounts they were to be paid by corrupt sports marketing companies in exchange for the rights to these events. Witnesses testified about when and how they had sent the six- and seven-figure sums. Bank records revealed how the money was transferred. And secret recordings captured one, Marin, seemingly negotiating a bribe directly.

In the margins, the court also heard evidence of bribery surrounding the vote for the 2022 football World Cup, which was awarded to the Gulf nation of Qatar. The circumstances of that vote – held in 2011 – have often been questioned, given Qatar’s abundant wealth but lack of football pedigree. But the court in Brooklyn heard direct testimony that a senior Fifa official had received at least $1m in exchange for his support.

What was presented at trial is undoubtedly a fraction of the evidence the US government has in its possession.

The three defendants had argued that although endemic corruption existed at South America’s governing body, they had not been a part of it and sought to push the blame on their colleagues. None of the three men testified in their own defence.

The courtroom was awash with tension before the partial verdicts were handed down – Marin, 85, rocked frantically back and forth on his chair and Napout, his wife and children in the public gallery, held his head in his hands. Both stared straight ahead as the verdicts were announced.

The court had heard eye-watering evidence of greed.

Marin, for example, had complained that a seven-figure annual bribe for the rights to the Copa Libertadores had not yet arrived in his bank account, during a May 2013 meeting in which he negotiated another $3m bribe for the rights to the Copa América.

The account of the meeting was delivered by Alejandro Burzaco, a government star witness who has already pleaded guilty for his own role in the scheme as the former CEO of an Argentinian media company that facilitated bribe payments.

According to prosecutors, Burzaco deposited millions into a shell entity controlled by Marin in early 2014, as shown in bank records displayed by the government. Shortly after that the Brazilian went on an international spending spree at luxury designer stores in Paris, Las Vegas and New York.

Marin has remained under house arrest at trial, commuting from his $3.5m apartment at Trump Tower in Manhattan every day.

Napout, the jury heard, took his payments in cash. The former chief of South American football sent his personal chauffeur on 30-hour round trips, driving from Asunción in Paraguay to Buenos Aires in Argentina, to deliver cash payments to the powerful head of the Argentinian football association Julio Grondona.

Ledgers revealed that six-figure cash sums were regularly withdrawn for Napout under a codename “Honda”. He also collected payments in the form of lavish gifts, according to witness testimony, including tickets to a Paul McCartney concert in Buenos Aires worth over $10,000 and payments on a luxury property in Uruguay.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mariano Jinkis, co-owner of Argentinian sports marketing firm Full Play group, Juan Ángel Napout and Hugo Jinkis, co-owner of Full Play group. Photograph: KMace/Handout

Between 2010-2016, prosecutors said, Napout was owed $10.5m, Burga $4.4m and Marin $6.55m in connection to various bribery schemes.

At times Napout’s defense argued that the overwhelming circumstantial evidence meant nothing as there was no eyewitness testimony showing money had ever changed hands. His lawyers seemed set on challenging the most minute details in the prosecution’s case and even declined to confirm whether such a McCartney concert had ever taken place.

As a result, the prosecution called on pop star Kevin Jonas, of the teen group the Jonas Brothers, to testify that he had been present at the event. During three minutes of evidence he confirmed that he had attended and described the concert as “pretty special”, despite him missing the first two songs.

Nitze, the assistant prosecutor, dismissed the defense’s efforts in his closing by returning to his rainfall metaphor: “A couple of people come in and say I’m soaked and the defence says, where’s your photograph?”

Napout had remained upbeat throughout the trial – once joking with security officers as he pointed to his electronic ankle bracelet entering the courthouse, and even pulling the Guardian aside during jury deliberations to talk about the best music concert he ever attended (Led Zeppelin at Earls Court in 1975, he said, mimicking Jimmy Page on guitar).

The jury convicted the Paraguayan on three of five counts and the Brazilian on six of seven counts. Each count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. The partial verdict was read after last-minute legal wrangling between attorneys who debated whether they could keep the partial verdict under court seal.

The scenes throughout the trial were not always so riveting, however. The evidence involved dozens of records and contracts showing payments to offshore shell companies and complex banking transactions, which formed the backbone of the case. One juror, a young man who had been asleep for significant portions of the first two weeks of evidence, was eventually dismissed by the judge, Pamela Chen.

“As I’m speaking to you, you’re yawning,” Chen told the juror as he was instructed to take his belongings and leave the court.

Amid concerns over intimidation, Chen had instructed that the jury remain anonymous and be driven to and from court under guard. Metal detectors were erected outside the courtroom and some witnesses entered the box through a protected doorway also used by the jury.

The tension boiled over during Burzaco’s testimony as Burga, the former head of football in Peru, was accused by prosecutors of making “slicing motion across his throat” towards the witness during proceedings. Burga’s lawyers argued their client had simply been “simply itching” his throat due to dermatitis he had contracted in the new New York climate. Nonetheless, Judge Chen imposed harsher bail restrictions on the Peruvian, removing his ability to use a phone or a computer, or even leave his apartment without the presence of his lawyer.

Hours earlier a former Argentinian government official, 52-year-old Jorge Delhon, had, according to authorities, committed suicide in Buenos Aires shortly after Burzaco told the court he had paid him annual $500,000 bribes.

The evidence presented at trial went far beyond the three defendants. The court heard of multimillion-dollar bribes paid to other Conmebol officials also indicted in the conspiracy.

Grondona, formerly Sepp Blatter’s number two at Fifa until his death in 2014, was the official alleged to have accepted at least $1m in exchange for his vote supporting Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, Burzaco said. The former media executive, a close confidant of Grondona’s for years, testified he had witnessed Grondona approach a group of Qataris after the vote and demanded a further $80m or a letter to the press saying he had never accepted any bribes.

A group of Qatari investors, too, had been close to buying out another of the allegedly corrupt sports marketing companies, Full Play Group, but pulled out shortly after its owners, father and son Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, were indicted by US authorities.



Santiago Peña, a former finance executive at Full Play told the court how the deal, worth $212m and known by a codename “the New York Project” had been kept almost entirely secret within the company. The Jinkis family would remain in operational control of the organization, associated with millions of dollars in bribes in the scheme, despite being bought out by Qatar.

But it was Grondona – who ledgers revealed was nicknamed the Pope due to his supreme power at Conmebol – and Brazil’s former football chief Ricardo Teixeira along with former Conmebol chief Nicolás Leoz, who were the most corrupt, according to Colombia’s former soccer president Luis Bedoya. Leoz and Teixeira have been indicted but not extradited to the US.

Bedoya himself has pleaded guilty to his part in the conspiracy and was brought to trial to testify against his former close associates. He told the story of how he and a group of six other officials – including Napout and Burga – attempted to wrest power away from these three ageing juggernauts in 2009. In doing so they secured bribes for themselves in relation to the tournaments, he said.

Bribes for TV soccer rights allegedly paid with 'agreement and support' of Murdoch's Fox executives Read more

Burzaco’s testimony led to other bombshell accusations on the sidelines. The former CEO alleged that other international broadcasters he partnered with had been involved in the payment of bribes for tournament rights. These included Brazil’s TV Globo and Mexico’s Televisa.

Burzaco added Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Sports to the list as well, a claim that was bolstered later by reporting by the Guardian that revealed US prosecutors agree that senior executives at Twenty First Century Fox, including the former CEO of Fox International channels Hernan Lopez and the current head of its Latin America division, Carlos Martinez, provided “agreement and support” for bribes in exchange for the Copa Libertadores rights. Fox had partnered with Burzaco’s company in an offshore venture that held the rights to the tournament until 2015.

Fox Sports and Lopez deny wrongdoing.

As Fifa prepares for the World Cup in Russia, 2018 should have been a showcase for the sport. But Friday’s verdict – a stunning victory for the US justice department – means it is likely that the corruption investigation will continue to cast a dark shadow over world football.

