A former judge who led the National Football Federation of Guatemala became the first person sentenced in the US in the FIFA world soccer corruption scandal when a judge ordered him to serve eight months in prison, saying his bribe money could have been used to build soccer fields for poor children.
Hector Trujillo, 63, was sentenced on Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court by Judge Pamela Chen for his June guilty plea to conspiracy and wire fraud charges.
The judge also ordered US$415,000 in restitution.
The judge said US$175,000 in bribes pocketed by Trujillo from 2009 to last year to steer sports marketing contracts from a Miami company to the federation was money “that should have been used to build soccer fields in poor neighborhoods” or buy uniforms for the athletes.
Trujillo said his conscience failed him.
He choked up and asked the judge for forgiveness, saying he had suffered enough.
Speaking through a Spanish-English interpreter, he said his arrest had brought his family “the most terrible shame” after he overcame a poor, but happy childhood to become an alternate judge on Guatemala’s constitution court, where he could fight corruption and injustice.
“My intention when I entered the federation was not greed or personal profit,” he said.
Yet, he rationalized the bribes as a reward for years of good work, he added.
“I was blinded,” Trujillo said. “Reflecting on this, I have been able to understand the magnitude of this shameful mistake that I made.”
Prosecutors had asked that the former general secretary of Guatemala’s soccer federation serve more than three years in prison.
Assistant US attorney Paul Tuchmann said Trujillo was similar to dozens of other defendants in the soccer scandal because “he seems to think that this was a victimless crime. It’s not a victimless crime.”
He said that attitude had been a longstanding problem with soccer officials worldwide.
“That culture of corruption needs to be stopped and deterred,” he said.
Defense lawyer Florian Miedel asked that Trujillo serve no more prison time after the month he spent incarcerated after his December 2015 arrest in Port Canaveral, Florida, during a Disney cruise.
Trujillo, free on US$4 million bail, has been staying in Miami.
Miedel called him the “least culpable” of more than 40 people and marketing agencies linked to soccer in the Americas who were indicted or delivered guilty pleas since 2015.
Many charges involve bribes paid around the organization of regional tournaments and World Cup qualifying games.
In court papers, Miedel noted that among 27 soccer officials charged in the case were one-time presidents of soccer federations in Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela and Uruguay.
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