By Mark Baber
February 1 – As much as $1 million in funds from soccer’s global governing body FIFA may have gone missing from Guatemala’s soccer federation last year, according to reports of an internal audit carried out by the federation.
In 2015, the Guatemalan soccer federation (Fedefut) received 8.24 million quetzals ($1.1 million) in nine deposits from FIFA from February to October, according to a document signed by the federation’s accountant and seen by the news agency Reuters.
However, the Fedefut budget presented early last year, which totalled about $1.5 million, only included around $250,000 in FIFA funding while the remaining funds from the nine deposits were not included, according to “sources knowledgeable about the internal audit.”
The internal audit was conducted by the FIFA committee which was put in charge of Guatemalan football after top officials including former head of Fedefut Brayan Jimenez and former Secretary-General Hector Trujillo were arrested on corruption charges. Jimenez was picked up inebriated after going on the run and Trujillo was arrested when his cruise ship stopped over in Florida.
On Friday the FIFA Committee filed a complaint with Guatemala’s attorney general office.
It appears the existence of the FIFA payments was not revealed to Fedfut’s general assembly, although a document has been found in which Fedefut’s top budget official Oswaldo Rolando confirmed that the federation’s financial division was informed of the extra deposits.
Rolando says: “I don’t know why they weren’t made available to the general assembly,” whilst Ciro Muralles, the former head of the financial division, told Reuters that he would not comment on the missing funds until he had had a chance to review the documents.
A spokesman for the FIFA committee running Fedefut commented that crimes “might have occurred” and the findings of the FIFA probe would be presented to a visiting FIFA official later this week.
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