FIFAGate: judicial sentences in danger and several defendants ask for their money back

Nearly a decade after police officers dragged soccer officials out of a luxury hotel in Zurich at dawn, revealing a… corruption scandal that has rocked the most popular sport in the worldthe case risks falling apart.

The dramatic turn comes in the wake of questions about whether U.S. prosecutors overstepped their bounds in applying U.S. law to a group of people, many of them foreign, who defrauded foreign organizations while carrying out corruption schemes around the world.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court it limited a law that was central to the case. Then, in September, a federal judge, citing this, overturned the convictions of two defendants linked to football corruption. Now, several former soccer officials, including some who have paid millions of dollars in fines and served prison terms, argue that the bribery schemes for which they were convicted are no longer considered a crime in the United States.

Encouraged by the overturned beliefs, They demand that their documents be canceled and their money returned.

Their hopes are tied to the September cases, in which the two defendants benefited from two recent Supreme Court rulings that rejected federal prosecutors’ application of the law at stake in football cases and offered unusual guidance on that which is known as honest services fraud. The defendants in the soccer trial were found to have engaged in acts of corruption that deprived organizations outside the United States of the honest services of their employees, which constituted fraud at the time. But the judge ruled that the court’s new guidelines mean such actions are no longer prohibited under US law.

This blow to the case, which federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are contesting, could turn world soccer’s deeply rooted history of corruption (detailed in a 236-page indictment and proven through 31 guilty pleas and four convictions at trial) into a story equally about The long arm of American justice goes too far.

“It’s pretty significant,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at Columbia University, “because the judge rejected the government’s basic theory.” He called the opinion “surprising but well-reasoned.”

Prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York are preparing to fight back. “This office will vigorously defend convictions,” spokesman John Marzulli said Thursday, “and will not stand idly by as violators attempt to recover millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.”

In a court filing this month, prosecutors argued that the federal judge who presided over the FIFA cases, Pamela K. Chen, had misread the Supreme Court. The foreign defendants, they said, had “substantial ties and activities to the United States” and had demonstrated that they knew what they were doing was a crime.

FIFA, a world apart

The legal debate comes at a time of growing concern that global sports organizations such as FIFA, the Switzerland-based world football governing body, operate in a world apart, untouchable for the authorities. Systemic corruption among world soccer’s top leaders has been widely documented, but until the Department of Justice built its complex case and brought charges in 2015, no government had risked tackling it so ambitiously, with allegations which affected three continents.

Once public, the FIFA investigation became one of the largest cross-border corruption cases in US history. It required cooperation from authorities abroad, who helped make arrests and extradite defendants to the United States, and exposed decades of corruption; allegations of secret contracts, money transfers and court intimidation; and official confirmation that millions of dollars in cash influenced the votes to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively.

The case was a boon for white-collar lawyers and a stroke of luck for international sport. It has boosted the profile of U.S. prosecutors, who have been praised for creatively enforcing the U.S. honest services fraud law, which prohibits people from betraying their employers by participating in bribery and bribery schemes that funnel money into their pockets. The legal strategy was seen as a new way to prosecute foreign commercial corruption.

The allegations led to an overhaul of FIFA’s leadership, including the firing of its former president, Sepp Blatter, and turned key players in the case into celebrities. Loretta Lynch, then Attorney General of the United States, was nicknamed FIFA-Jägerin, or FIFA Slayer, by the German media.

This case was hardly the first in which the Justice Department brought complicated charges with global reach. But its reach and enormous focus on other parts of the world raised questions about why federal prosecutors in Brooklyn had decided to pour years of resources into the investigation. As justification, prosecutors pointed to the defendants’ use of American banks and, more generally, the “affront to international principles” that Lynch said their plans represented.

Now, as U.S. prosecutors prepare to defend their work before a federal appeals court, the idea that U.S. law could apply when others were unable or unwilling to act is in doubt. That has opened the door to a dramatic possibility: that prominent sports officials and businessmen who solicited or accepted bribes could have their convictions overturned and their fortunes recovered.

In an interview last week, former Paraguayan football official Juan Ángel Napout said he had been convicted of setting an example. “Why me?” He said. “They needed someone and it was me.”

Napout has paid more than $4 million to the U.S. government, which has so far remitted more than $120 million in money seized from FIFA and has pledged to release tens of millions more. Back in Asunción since being released from prison last summer, Napout, 65, is calling on the United States to overturn his conviction and return his money.

Napout was jailed longer than anyone else involved in the sprawling case; His once luxurious lifestyle changed when he became a cook in a Florida prison. He said that he had not considered an appeal until the acquittal hearing in September, and that he would proceed only at the urging of his family “so that my criminal record is clean.”

Although the government’s appeal of the recent acquittals is pending (an open question that must be resolved before Napout’s request is addressed), it is not the only one to seize the opportunity to make a clean sweep.

In recent weeks, José María Marín, a former Brazilian soccer official who also served prison sentences and paid millionaire fines, and Alfredo Hawit, a former Honduran soccer official who pleaded guilty and cooperated with the government, have advanced similar requests.

In their legal filings, they rehash some of the arguments they made when they were first charged, when lawyers objected to what they called excessive use of a vague law by U.S. prosecutors. At the time, some pointed out that, in countries like Brazil, paying bribes in a private business transaction to secure a deal or contract is not uncommon (or illegal).

As the legal battle continues, prominent opponents in the case have made breakthroughs. The football organizations involved have new leaders. In 2019, four years after Lynch issued a stern warning to figures not yet charged in the case – “They will not wait for us” – she joined the American law firm Paul, Weiss and became an advocate for the new FIFA. At least twice in recent years you have addressed FIFA directly, praising the organization’s “renewed commitment to transparency and ethical behavior.”

But recently, FIFA has come under renewed scrutiny for bypassing standard processes, such as when it actually awarded valuable 2034 World Cup hosting rights to Saudi Arabia without competitive bidding. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, promoted after Blatter’s ouster, has explored expanding the limits of his time in the top job.

The outcome of the new appeals, which will be heard before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, could have implications not only for convicted defendants like Napout, but also for those who were charged but remain at large. and out of prison. reach of the US authorities. They include influential FIFA veteran Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago; Argentine television directors Hugo and Mariano Jinkis; and former Brazilian football coaches Marco Polo del Nero and Ricardo Teixeira.

Also At stake are at least 200 million dollars paid by the convicts; Part of this amount was earmarked for FIFA, seen as a victim of corruption within it, and was donated to causes including football programs for women, youth and disabled people. FIFA said $50 million has already been allocated to the projects.

Paul Tuchmann, a former prosecutor who now works at the law firm Wiggin and Dana, called the decision to acquit the two defendants “a setback” but said that whatever the appeals court decides, “it doesn’t it can turn back time and erase the impact.”

However, Tuchmann added, undoing the government’s work would have far-reaching consequences, inside and outside of global sport.

“People with some astuteness will understand that the criminal justice system of the United States will not touch them,” he said. “And I think that’s a shame.”