By Andrew Warshaw
September 1 – A seven-bedroom mansion controlled by a company owned by the wife of disgraced former FIFA powerbroker Ricardo Teixeira has been sold for $9 million suggesting the Brazilian, under investigation back home for allegedly accepting millions of dollars in bribes, is no longer taking refuge in the United States.
The 15-year-old property was reportedly purchased in 2012 for $7.425 million in cash from none other than tennis star Anna Kournikova star who sold it to Ochab Properties, run by Teixeira’s wife, Ana Carolina Wigand Rodrigues.
Teixeira, once one of the most powerful individuals in world football who was head of the Brazil 2014 World Cup organising committee, resigned from all his footballing roles in March, 2012, citing ill-health.
But long before that he was being investigated for various alleged crimes, including tax evasion and money laundering, and fled to Miami when the Brazilian authorities stepped up their probe. Reports suggest that he has also sold a Rio property at below market value to help pay for a hefty tax bill.
Teixeira, who used to be a prominent FIFA executive committee member, has not been implicated in the ongoing US probe into widespread corruption by FIFA officials. But the one-time president of the Brazilian football confederation’s former number two and successor, Jose Maria Marin, was among those detained in Zurich in May.
Teixeira was also heavily implicated in the infamous ISL scandal with the Swiss prosecutor’s report revealing that, during his tenure on FIFA’s exco, he and his one-time father-in-law, ex-FIFA President Joao Havelange, took more than $41 million in bribes in connection with the award of World Cup marketing rights.
During the summer Teixeira’s name was also linked to payments from Qatar which were found in a bank account in his name. The payments were for €30 million and were found in a Monaco account that was opened two years after Qatar won the rights to host the 2022 World Cup.
The payments did not come from the Qatar 2022 bid team but appeared to be from a construction company that would have benefited from a Qatar victory. Teixeira denied his vote had been bought. “I voted for Qatar, but I did not receive a penny for this,” he said at the time.
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