A corruption trial started Monday in New York against former FIFA Vice President Juan Angel Napout, former president of Peru’s soccer federation Manuel Burga and former head of Brazil’s soccer federation Jose Maria Marin, The Wall Street Journal informs.
Lawyers for the three former top Latin American soccer officials told a Brooklyn federal jury that their clients are innocent and unfairly charged by U.S. prosecutors.
“You’re not here to decide whether foreign soccer is corrupt. Your sole duty is to decide if Juan Angel Napout was part of a criminal enterprise,” Silvia Piñera-Vazquez, a lawyer for former FIFA Vice President Juan Angel Napout, sain in an opening statement.
Prosecutors from the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office allege that Napout, who led Paraguay’s soccer federation and Conmebol, the South American soccer federation, accepted bribes and kickbacks in connection with lucrative media and marketing rights for international soccer tournaments. The racketeering trial grew out of a federal investigation into alleged widespread corruption in FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, The Journal adds.
Manuel Burga, the former president of Peru’s soccer federation, and Jose Maria Marin, the former head of Brazil’s soccer federation, are also on trial in Brooklyn federal court.
According to Bruce Udolf, a lawyer representing Burga, the government “simply got it wrong” and used “too broad a brush” in its investigation of FIFA – a probe that had produced 30 million pages of material, none of which would show Burga receiving or soliciting bribes, he noted.
Charles Allen Stillman, a lawyer representing Marin, compared his client with a “fill-in” player on a youth soccer team. Prosecutors allege that Marin was part of several schemes involving rights to major international soccer tournaments.
Lawyers for the defendants signaled that they will likely attack the credibility of the government’s cooperating witnesses – the people who have pleaded guilty in the case in hopes of a lighter sentence. Udolf described the cooperating witnesses as “some of the most corrupt people on earth.” The Journal notes.
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