The South American soccer barons gathered at Miami Beach’s St. Regis Bal Harbour hotel in late April 2014 to gloat: they’d just made $100 million selling the rights to the Copa America soccer tournament.
“Business is going very well!” Argentinian sports-marketing executive Mariano Jinkis elatedly told his partners, citing sales to Mexico’s Univision and Fox Sports. “We will have $100 million of profit,” he crowed, “from the U.S. only!”
What Jinkis didn’t know was the FBI was also listening -- through surreptitious recordings made by an associate. That’s how the U.S. mounted a sprawling corruption probe of FIFA, the organizing body for the world’s most popular sport, eventually ensnaring more than 40 people, including soccer officials and sports-marketing businessmen.
Just what these big payoffs meant for soccer dons wasn’t fully known until federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, began unveiling their evidence at the racketeering trial of three former South American soccer officials. For the past five weeks, a U.S. jury that includes teachers and retirees has heard all about the luxe life these men lived that included suppers featuring tango dancing, flights on private jets to exclusive resorts like Mauritius, stays at five-star hotels and a clandestine night meeting at a lavish farm at an Uruguayan resort.
Personal Grooming
One defendant, Juan Angel Napout, a Paraguayan who was former president of South American soccer’s ruling federation, was big on personal grooming with his manicures, pedicures and massages discretely arranged by his chauffeur, according to testimony.
“If this is true, the defendants are purveyors of good taste and high-end luxury goods, but there’s a solid evidentiary reason for this evidence as well,” said Anthony Sabino, who teaches law at the business school of St. John’s University in New York. “It demonstrates the paper trail these defendants left: here’s people accepting this money, here’s evidence showing that they got this money and here’s how they spent it. It’s part and parcel of proving the corruption.”
Napout’s driver performed another duty -- he drove 30 hours from Asuncion, Paraguay, to Buenos Aires and back to pick up and deliver cash bribes to his boss and facilitate payments to another Argentinian official, according to former sports-marketing executive Alejandro Burzaco, who pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the U.S. government.
Prosecutors say Napout collected millions of dollars in bribes as well as gifts -- such as $10,175.88 worth of tickets to a Paul McCartney concert in Buenos Aires.
“We grew up with him, we owe it to the Beatles and Paul is a genius!” Napout’s friend said in an email after the sold-out November 2010 concert. “For me this is my dream come true.”