FIFA vice presidents Juan Angel Napout and Alfredo Hawit have been banned from soccer after being indicted on bribery and racketeering charges.
The FIFA ethics committee said judge Joachim Eckert applied the provisional bans, which were requested by ethics prosecutor Cornel Borbely.
South American Football Federation (CONMEBOL) president Napout and Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) president Hawit were arrested in pre-dawn raids at a Zurich hotel on Thursday. They were indicted by the US Department of Justice for allegedly taking millions of US dollars in bribes from television and marketing rights.
Photo: AFP
Napout, from Paraguay, and Hawit, from Honduras, are resisting extradition to the US, while being detained in Zurich-area jails.
The FIFA ethics bans are routine for officials indicted in the sweeping US investigation.
CONCACAF’s executive committee also provisionally banned Hawit along with six others who were indicted.
Among them was former Honduran president Rafael Callejas — a current member of FIFA’s television and marketing committee, and Hector Trujillo, a judge on Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, who is general secretary of Guatemala’s soccer federation. Trujillo was arrested on Friday aboard a cruise ship at Port Canaveral, Florida.
Others banned provisionally by CONCACAF include: Ariel Alvarado, a current member of FIFA’s disciplinary committee, who was the president of Panama’s soccer federation from 2004 to 2012; Brayan Jimenez, president of Guatemala’s soccer federation; Rafael Salguero, a former president of Guatemala’s federation and a member of FIFA’s executive committee until May last year; and Reynaldo Vasquez, a former president of El Salvador’s soccer federation.
Also on Friday, a lawyer for former Brazilian soccer federation president Jose Maria Marin, who was indicted in May, said his client has deposited a total of US$1 million bail with the clerk of a US federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The court on Friday said it had received the final US$230,000.
In a letter to US District Judge Raymond Dearie, lawyer Charles Stillman said Marin hopes to obtain a US$2 million surety bond, the final item of collateral, in the next week.
Guatemalan prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Jimenez.
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