By Andrew Warshaw
July 11 – The World Cup tickets scandal plaguing FIFA in the build-up to Sunday’s showpiece final is further intensifying with Brazilian police now treating the figure at the centre of their inquiries, Ray Whelan (pictured), who works for one of FIFA’s key associate companies, as a fugitive while his employers insist he is totally innocent of any wrongdoing.
In what is rapidly becoming a who dunnit-style tale of claim and counter-claim, police say Whelan, director of the Accommodation office of MATCH Services, subsidiary of Fifa’s longstanding World Cup partners Byrom – has gone on the run while the company continue to stick by him.
Whelan was originally arrested and then released through lack of evidence and has since reportedly handed in his World Cup accreditation. Police claim he is linked to a major World Cup ticket tout scam masterminded by an Algerian national, Lamine Fofana.
Selling tickets at inflated prices is illegal in Brazil and Fabio Barucke, leader of Operacao Jules Rimet, claims Whelan slipped out of the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro 20 minutes before the police turned up to re-arrest him. Barucke was quoted as saying by Associated Press: “He’s now considered a fugitive. We have security camera images of him exiting the hotel through a service door.”
Barucke told the AP that he’s formally requesting that a judge consider the action of Whelan and at least 11 others already arrested in the alleged scandal of having formed a conspiracy.
Barucke said in the AP interview that police recorded 900 calls between Whelan and Fofana since the World Cup began June 12 – and that virtually all of them referred to the selling of tickets. “Raymond knew that Fofana was a scalper, he knew that he was going to resell those tickets on the black market,” Barucke said.
But in a series of detailed statements, Match Services denied any wrongdoing by Whelan, and said he was willing to cooperate with any investigation, confident that it would exonerate him of any wrongdoing.
Match, which owns rights to sell World Cup hospitality packages, acknowledged that Whelan and Fofana discussed cash sales of tickets, but re-iterated the packages involved included not just tickets but exclusive VIP services.
“The 24 hospitality packages were offered on a cash basis, which is highly unusual but permitted under the various terms and conditions,” MATCH said in a statement. “It must be noted that Mr Whelan was not aware of the fact that MATCH Hospitality had internally blocked sales to Mr Fofana.”
Earlier this week, MATCH challenged police to justify the “arbitrary and illegal” arrest of Whelan, a director of MATCH’s accommodation service who is a brother-in-law of company founders Jaime and Enrique Byrom.
Jaime Byrom, whose company has worked with FIFA for 30 years, also took the authorities to task, issuing a personal statement in which he said Match remained committed to assisting police “notwithstanding our belief that the action taken against Mr Whelan was illegal and baseless.”
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