By Paul Nicholson
December 3 – Lightening does strike twice at FIFA. Police for the second time this year swooped on the Baur au Lac Hotel in Zurich in dawn raids this morning arresting two more FIFA executive committee members.
The two arrested were CONMEBOL president Juan Angel Napout from Paraguay and CONCACAF’s interim president Alfredo Hawit from Honduras.
Hawit was standing in at CONCACAF for the second time as interim president after Jeffrey Webb was arrested in May in similar circumstances at the Baur au Lac. He filled the same role when Jack Warner was suspended following the cash-for-votes scandal in 2011. Napout had only been elected as president of CONMEBOL in March this year.
The arrests will come as further hammer blows to the two confederations that were already reeling from the arrests in May that saw key officials from both confederations charged by the US Department of Justice of racketeering, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering. The arrests were carried out by the Swiss police on behalf of the US Department of Justice.
Further arrests are believed to be either taking place or planned, though no details are yet forthcoming but predictions are for as many as 16 further people to be taken into custody. Neither suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter or suspended FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke are among those arrested.
This second round of US indictments are expected to be unsealed this morning at a press conference in the US to be led by US attorney general Loretta Lynch. The FBI and US tax authorities have led the investigation so far which is said to have been going on for years and further arrests had been expected. They had not been expected to be a replay of the arrests in May at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich.
FIFA’s executive committee is gathered in Zurich for its final meeting of the year with a number of crucial issues on its agenda, including the approval of a set of reforms that will go before the full FIFA Congress when it meets in emergency session February 26.
The urgent step up in the pace of FIFA’s reform process was triggered in May with the arrests of the ‘Zurich 7’ and charges against 18 federation and sports marketing executives from North and South America on corruption charges totalling up to $150 million.
FIFA says it “FIFA became aware of the actions taken today by the US Department of Justice,” and that it “will continue to co-operate fully with the US investigation as permitted by Swiss law, as well as with the investigation being led by the Swiss Office of the Attorney General.
“FIFA will have no further comment on today’s developments.”
The charges against the individuals are believed to be an extension of the those made against the officials already in custody. Those charges are of accepting millions of dollars in bribes related to the sale of marketing rights for World Cup qualifying matches and tournaments in Latin America, in particular the Copa America tournament.
A press conference took place this lunchtime to discuss the outcomes of the FIFA exco meetings and the reform proposals in particular that will now go through to FIFA’s Congress in February. See http://bit.ly/1LRcqyc
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