August 27 – CONMEBOL and FIFA are to jointly audit the finances of the Bolivian Football Federation, whose leader was jailed for alleged corruption.
CONMEBOL’s new president Juan Angel Napout (pictured), who has been attempting to make serious strides in cleaning up the confederation, told The Associated Press the audit will be carried out through a private company.
In July, Bolivian FA head Carlos Chavez was jailed in the eastern city of Santa Cruz on charges he diverted funds from a charity match. Napout said Chavez will be temporarily replaced by Argentine Football Association President Luis Segura.
Napout also revealed CONMEBOL’s executive committee will meet in Asuncion October 10 to examine a preliminary report by a US law firm reviewing the confederation’s contracts with companies accused in the infamous US probe into corruption at FIFA.
“We plan to make big reforms to CONMEBOL, but we need to know the opinion of these lawyers first,” Napout said, adding that the contracts were signed before he took over as president last year.
Last month, CONMEBOL said it needed ”total and absolute change”, after it became engulfed in the FIFA corruption scandal. Several CONMEBOL officials are among those indicted in the US investigation, including two former presidents Eugenio Figueredo and Nicolas Leoz.
According to reports, Leoz is also being probed by the separate Swiss investigation into alleged wrongdoing in the 2018 and 2022 bid process. The veteran Paraguayan headed CONMEBOL from 1986 to 2013 and was a member of FIFA’s executive committee for 15 years.
Swiss officials are also investigating Eduardo Deluca, a long-term general secretary of CONMEBOL, after private bank Pictet apparently tipped them off in June about suspicious movements in an bank account, the Zurich daily Tages Anzeiger said.
Millions of Swiss francs were paid into the account by FIFA and by Japanese advertising agencies, and much of the money was then transferred to Paraguay, the paper claimed.
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