By Andrew Warshaw
July 18 – Who says the crisis at FIFA is over? Angel Maria Villar, FIFA’s senior vice-president and one of the last surviving members of the organisation’s old guard, has been sensationally arrested in his native Spain along with his son in an anti-corruption raid carried out by Spanish authorities.
Villar, who is also a UEFA vice-president and briefly ran European football’s governing body during the interim period between Michel Platini and Aleksander Ceferin, was detained by Spain’s Guardia Civil on order of the country’s High Court.
Initial reports said the arrests of Villar, who has run Spanish football for almost three decades, and his son Gorka were carried out during a swoop on the federation’s headquarters following claims that he used Spanish FA (RFEF) funds to secure support for his re-election as president two months ago.
The pair were detained on suspicion of falsifying documents, private corruption and misappropriation, according to Marca. One other official arrested has been named by Spanish media as Juan Padron, economic vice-president of the RFEF.
A brief police statement said merely the arrests were as a result of “’irregularites in the management of the Federation.”
In May, Villar won an eighth term after standing unopposed when his former secretary general Jorge Perez withdrew after failing to muster the necessary backing. Perez tried unsuccessfully to have the election annulled and subsequently threatened to take Villar to Spain’s highest sports court over alleged irregularities in the election of the RFEF assembly.
Villar has presided over the most glorious period in the Spanish national team’s history yet despite his longevity, the canny and seemingly untouchable lawyer’s time in charge domestically and as a long-standing senior FIFA and UEFA voice has been dogged by controversy.
While other top FIFA bigwigs have seen their careers come crashing down, Villar was fined CHF 25,000 by FIFA’s ethics committee in 2015 for failing to cooperate with the investigation into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively.
He led the Portugal/Spain campaign which ultimately failed dismally amid claims that a €1.2 million government grant was used for development projects in the Caribbean.
Earlier than that, back in March 2014, Villar was exposed by this website and two other media organisations as one of the conservative old guard who allegedly tried and failed to shut down the notorious Michael Garcia corruption probe whilst it was in full swing.
Despite all this, Villar took on the interim UEFA presidency for roughly a year following Platini’s suspension until the election of Ceferin. At one point he had been a candidate himself but never really stood a chance and abandoned the idea in order to concentrate on staying at the helm back home, his resistance to reform having clearly worked against him.
Interestingly, just as Villar announced his ultimately doomed bid for the UEFA presidency, so his son, no stranger to controversy himself, left CONMEBOL, where he was director general, by “common accord”.
FIFA has long been uncomfortable with family members holding separate positions of power because of potential conflicts of interests and Gorka worked under three CONMEBOL presidents who were indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year in the ongoing bribery scandal.
He has long been sought by authorities in Uruguay over claims he ‘extorted’ eight Uruguayan clubs to withdraw a complaint of corruption filed against CONMEBOL in 2013.
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