The Swiss Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPC) is to close one of two investigations into former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, reports said on Friday.
French newspaper Le Monde and German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said that the 84-year-old will not be prosecuted over a charge relating to TV rights sold to the Caribbean Football Union (CFU).
That was one of two criminal cases opened against Blatter in 2015 for “suspicion of unfair management and breach of trust.”
Photo: AP
Blatter told reporters on Friday that he had “not personally received the document of the MPC. I will ask my lawyer to forward it to me. It relates to the contract over TV rights.”
Swiss prosecutors suspected Blatter of having signed a “contract unfavorable to FIFA” with the CFU, then under the control of Jack Warner, who was banned from soccer for life and indicted for corruption by US justice officials.
The contract granted television rights for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups to the CFU for US$600,000, an amount deemed to be below market price.
Blatter still faces a second criminal investigation over the payment of 2 million Swiss francs (US$2.07 million) to then-UEFA president Michel Platini in February 2011.
“Once the case concerning the payment of 2 million Swiss francs to Platini is also closed, I will ask FIFA for my rehabilitation ... because my suspension by the FIFA ethics committee was made on the basis of accusations by the Swiss justice,” Blatter said.
Blatter was ousted from office in 2015 and is serving a six-year ban from FIFA activities.
Platini was banned from soccer for four years by FIFA.
Separately, a US judge in New York on Friday denied a request by the former head of South American soccer to be given compassionate release from prison because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but reserved judgement on his request for to be let out on bail pending his appeal.
US District Judge Pamela Chen said that Juan Angel Napout had not exhausted his administrative remedies with the US Federal Bureau of Prisons in seeking compassionate release.
Napout was convicted in December 2017 of accepting bribes. He is serving a nine-year sentence and is scheduled for release on Aug. 9, 2025.
“I am not going to be a fugitive, your honor,” Napout said near the end of an 85-minute telephone hearing. “I’m just asking you, your honor, for your mercy.”
His request for bail was opposed by federal prosecutors.
“The motivation and incentive to flee is at its peak now that Mr Napout has been in for a time and sees what it’s like and would face the prospect of going back in should he lose his appeal,” Assistant US Attorney Samuel Nitze said.
He called Napout “a defendant of enormous means, zero ties to the United States, significant ties to his home country and to very powerful people in that home country, a demonstrated willingness to obstruct justice.”
Napout was president of the South American governing body, CONMEBOL, from August 2014 until December 2015, president of the Paraguayan Football Association from 2007 to 2014 and a member of FIFA’s executive committee.
He was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland, while attending FIFA meetings in December 2015.
Napout was convicted on Dec. 22, 2017, of one count of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, and he was taken into custody that day.
He was sentenced by Chen to nine years in prison on Aug. 29, 2018, and is at the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Miami.
His attempt to overturn the verdict was argued on Nov. 7 at the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals and is pending.
Napout on March 30 filed a request for compassionate release with the US Bureau of Prisons and the bureau has 30 days to make a decision.
His lawyers cited correlation between greater risk for more severe COVID-19 symptoms in older people.
The US government said no prisoner at the Miami facility had gotten ill and Chen cited his being in the lower end of the 60-69 group.
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