By Paul Nicholson

August 8 – If the FBI is having trouble finding (and arresting) Brazilian football president Marco Polo del Nero then they should have a word with FIFA’s new president Gianni Infantino. He was pictured at the weekend hanging out with del Nero in Rio de Janeiro during the opening days of the Olympic games.

Infantino was cleared by his own Ethics committee last Friday of any wrong-doing as regards to the taking of private jets and inflating his own expenses (among a host of other charges leveled at him). But no sooner had he been cleared than a picture of him with Del Nero emerged in Rio where he was attending opening games of the men’s Olympic tournament and the opening ceremony of the 2016 games.

The picture saw Del Nero with Infantino holding up a Brazil shirt with his name, Gianni, on the back.

While Infantino has broken no laws posing with Del Nero, the picture once again calls into question the ethical and moral judgement of a man elected to the head of FIFA on a platform of purging the institution of corruption and corrupt people. Brazil supported Infantino’s FIFA candidacy though Del Nero was not there in person to help vote him in.

Del Nero, a former FIFA executive committee member, fled Zurich in May 2015 after the first wave of FBI arrests in the Swiss city just before the FIFA Congress. But unlike the famous world explorer’s name he shares, football’s Marco Polo has not left Brazil since 2015, with the only voyage of discovery being that into his own allegedly corrupt dealings.

The US Justice Department has an arrest warrant out for him on charges of conspiracy, fraud and money-laundering. Having taken a leave of absence from the CBF in January, he reassumed presidential duties in April, presumably with the full backing of FIFA despite the charges against him.

Del Nero is one of 42 officials and entities indicted as part of the US-led probe into $200 million worth of corruption. His CBF predecessor Jose Maria Marin is under house arrest in New York after being extradited from Switzerland but del Nero avoided the same fate by declining to show up at FIFA meetings – or Brazil games outside his own country – for the best part of six months.

Quite what the American justice authorities will think about Infantino’s meeting with Del Nero remains to be seen. There has been no statement from them on the matter.

Though with the FBI still very much involved with investigating FIFA and its officials, and FIFA desperate to hang on to its ‘victim status’ in the eyes of US justice authorities (a status that keeps them away from prosecution, for the time being), the photo opportunity with Del Nero looks horribly ill-timed for the organisation.

The US of course was ultimately the instrumental driving force in getting Infantino elected to the FIFA presidency. So unless their man was on a mission in Brazil, it looks like he could have made a PR gaffe of Olympic proportions that could fall right into the racketeering narrative US prosecutors are building.

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