A top player on Brazil’s men’s national volleyball team said on Friday that players feel “betrayed” by the former president of the Brazilian Volleyball Confederation, who is being investigated by a federal watchdog agency for alleged corruption.
The Brazilian Comptroller-General’s office — known as the CGU — released a report on Thursday citing financial “irregularities” and implicated former confederation president Ary Graca. Graca resigned earlier this year, but remains president of the FIVB, the Switzerland-based world governing body of volleyball. He said his resignation was not connected to ongoing reports of malfeasance.
“Most of the players have the same feeling of betrayal,” Murilo Endres said in an interview with ESPN in Brazil. “We have dedicated our time, our sweat, our knees, our shoulders, our ankles to this person and, unfortunately, we were betrayed by him.”
“Indignation and betrayal summarize our feelings, but we will go after this, so it does not go unpunished,” Endres said.
Volleyball is popular in Brazil and the nation will be among the medal favorites in the sport at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Former confederation president Carlos Nuzman made the sport a powerhouse in Brazil and is now an International Olympic Committee member and head of the organizing committee for the Rio Games.
He is not implicated in any wrongdoing in the report.
It is not clear if Brazil’s court system will act on the findings of the anti-corruption body.
The CGU said the volleyball confederation misappropriated about US$11 million in sponsorship income, channeling it to companies controlled by Graca’s friends and relatives.
State-run Banco do Brasil said on Thursday it was halting sponsorship payments to the confederation.
In a statement on Thursday, the volleyball confederation said it was under new management and had put in place “responsible governance, and above all, ethics.”
It said it had made its accounts available to supervisory authorities and had set up a permanent internal audit.
“What we want, what the volleyball community wants is morality in the sport,” coach Bernado Rezende said. “The people on the courts are suffering with this. I, myself, had health problems because of all of this that is happening. We are on the courts, playing, fighting, and we see things like this.”
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