By Andrew Warshaw
December 5 – The two FIFA vice-presidents arrested by police in Zurich on Thursday as part of the burgeoning corruption scandal have been handed 90-day provisional suspensions by the ethics committee.
Juan Angel Napout, the Paraguayan head of CONMEBOL, and Alfredo Hawit, the Honduran who was in temporary charge CONCACAF, were both on the latest list of indictments unsealed by US authorities on Thursday and announced at a press conference in Washington led by US Attorney General Loretta Lynch (pictured), Hawit and Napout are both in custody in Switzerland fighting extradition.
The FIFA ethics committee said adjudicatory chief Hans-Joachim Eckert applied the provisional bans following a request by ethics prosecutor Cornel Borbely.
“The reason for the ban, which was based on the request of the investigatory chamber under its chairman Dr Cornel Borbely, is the indictment issued yesterday by the United States Department of Justice for charges of racketeering, conspiracy and corruption,” a statement said.
Napout and Hawit were among 16 football officials charged by US prosecutors for alleged bribery and racketeering. FIFA’s ethics panel routinely bans officials who are under criminal investigation but the suspensions nevertheless amount to another serious blow to world football’s governing body.
Ironically at the time of their arrest, at the same Zurich hotel where the first wave of arrests took place in May, both were about to attend the second day of an executive committee meeting to rubber-stamp reforms aimed at cleaning up the sport and wiping out corruption.
Marco Polo del Nero, another of those cited in the US indictment, has temporarily quit as president of the Brazilian Football Federation (CBF). Del Nero had asked for a leave of absence, with Marcus Antonio Vicente to occupy the role on an interim basis.
The 74-year-old del Nero, who stepped down from FIFA’s Executive Committee last week, is on the new “superseding” 92-count indictment, which alleges “racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies” with “sustained abuse of [the defendants’] positions for financial gain”.
In a statement released late on Thursday, the CBF said: “The Brazilian Football Confederation hereby announces, in view of the news aired today that president Marco Polo Del Nero has filed a request for a leave of absence in order to devote himself to his defence, in light of having been named in charges reported by the US Justice and the FIFAEthics Committee. ”None of the allegations were made known to the president and, being sure of his absolute innocence, he is able to exercise the religious and constitutional rights to fight this and build a full defence. In this period of absence, the president, in compliance with his statutory tasks, temporarily assigns vice-president Marcus Antonio Vicente to exercise the presidency of the CBF.”
Meanwhile, CONCACAF’s executive committee also provisionally banned Hawit along with six others who were indicted. Among them was Rafael Callejas, a current member of FIFA’s television and marketing committee, and Hector Trujillo, a judge on Guatemala’s Constitutional Court who is general secretary of the Guatemalan FA.
Others banned provisionally by CONCACAF:
– Ariel Alvarado, current member of FIFA’s disciplinary committee who was president of the Panama federation from 2004-12;
– Brayan Jimenez, president of Guatemala’s FA;
– Rafael Salguero, former president of Guatemala’s FA and a member of FIFA’s executive committee until last May
– Reynaldo Vasquez, former president of El Salvador’s federation.
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