By Paul Nicholson
June 19 – Zurich-based private bank Julius Baer is emerging as one of the key conduits for South American and US money in the FIFA corruption scandal. The bank has reacted by freezing the accounts of several football officials as well as blocking credit cards linked to those accounts.
Inside Paradeplatz, a specialist financial and banking publication in Zurich, reported that the accounts were blocked last week in what was a delayed reaction to the bank being identified in the US Department of Justice indictments three weeks ago.
A Julius Baer spokesman said that the bank had “launched an internal investigation,” and was cooperating “fully with the authorities”.
It is becoming clear that Julius Baer is likely one of the main hubs in the corruption scandal with the emerging private bank apparently one of the preferred homes of FIFA’s top people.
The blocked accounts are mainly those belonging individuals in the Confederations and their marketing associates, and not FIFA employees or elected officials based at the head office in Zurich.
In its indictment against those arrested in the police swoop on the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich and the follow-up arrests of the sports marketing executives, the US Department of Justice mentioned Julius Baer in two places.
The connection is through FPT sport, an entity that is part of the Argentine Torneos y Competencias sports marketing company that was led by Alejandro Burzaco (he handed himself in to Italian police last week having been missed in the original arrests as he was having breakfast when the policed raided his hotel).
On June 17, 2013 a US bank transferred the sum of $5 million to a corresponding account at JP Morgan in New York. The beneficiary was an account of FPT sport in Julius Baer in Zurich.
Three months later, on September 11, 2013, a further $1.7 million was transferred from an account at the Zurich branch of Bank Hapoalim.
Julius Baer is no stranger to corruption scandals having been caught up in criminal cases in Germany, a US tax case as well as being implicated in the Brazilian Petrobas-corruption scandal.
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