June 6 – Former Guatemalan FA general secretary Hector Trujillo, arrested in the US while on a Disney cruise ship with his family in Florida, has pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the Brooklyn federal court, New York. Trujillo was arrested in the US Department of Justice probe into corruption in football.
Trujillo, 63, who worked for the Guatemalan federation from 2009 to 2015, was also a judge on the country’s constitutional court. Initially charged with eight offenses following his arrest in December 2015 he was released on bail of $4 million in January 2016.
US prosecutors say Trujillo and other federation officials accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from a Miami-based sports marketing company in exchange for media and marketing rights to Guatemala’s World Cup qualification matches.
Trujillo agreed to pay $175,000 as part of his plea. In a sign of perhaps what other defendants can expect – there are now more than 40 who have pleaded guilty and just three still scheduled to go to trial – he agreed not to contest any sentence less than four years and nine months in prison.
“I recognised that I deprived the federation of my honest services. I know that it was wrong for me to accept those payments,” Trujillo told the court.
He said the bribes were to help the sports marketing company secure contracts through current and future negotiations and that he received bribes in 2010 and 2014 and paid some of the proceeds to others, not telling the Guatemalan federation he had received payments.
Trujillo is not the only Guatemalan awaiting sentence. Former federation president Brayan Jimenez was banned for life by FIFA in April after pleading guilty to racketeering and wire fraud.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1735135569labto1735135569ofdlr1735135569owedi1735135569sni@n1735135569osloh1735135569cin.l1735135569uap1735135569