Federal agents boarded a Disney cruise ship in Florida on Friday to arrest a Guatemalan judge who is one of dozens of football officials charged by US prosecutors investigating corruption in the sport's world governing body FIFA.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that Hector Trujillo, 62, was arrested by US Customs and Border Protection agents who went to his cabin door. Trujillo was on a Disney cruise ship docked at Port Canaveral, Florida, when he was arrested, another law enforcement source said.
Trujillo, one of 41 people and entities charged in a US corruption sweep that has rocked football worldwide, appeared in federal court in Orlando, Florida. A magistrate judge ordered him held pending his transfer to Brooklyn, New York, where the cases against officials were first brought, and a possible bond hearing to be held there. His family, including a son wearing a 2014 FIFA World Cup T-shirt, looked on as Trujillo was read his rights through an interpreter.
Football bosses from across South and Central America, including Trujillo, were among 16 people charged on Thursday by US prosecutors with bribery and kickback schemes amounting to more than $200 million for marketing and broadcast rights to tournaments and matches. The total number of indictments is now 41 in a probe spanning dozens of countries.
FIFA is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis with criminal investigations into the sport under way in the United States and Switzerland. Its president Sepp Blatter is among officials who have been suspended by its own ethics committee.
At FIFA headquarters in Zurich on Friday, FIFA executive committee members Juan Angel Napout of Paraguay and Alfredo Hawit of Honduras were suspended from soccer for 90 days after their arrests at hotel in the city on Thursday morning.
Napout is president of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) and Hawit is head of the CONCACAF confederation that runs the sport in North, Central America and the Caribbean.
On Friday, CONCACAF provisionally banned Trujillo and six other officials who have been indicted, including their interim president Alfredo Hawit of Honduras, from "all football related activities".
At a news conference in Washington, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the corruption allegations against Trujillo presented a contradiction with his position as a judge on Guatemala's top court.
Trujillo, the secretary general of the Guatemalan football federation, was "purportedly dispensing justice by day while allegedly soliciting bribes and selling his influence within FIFA," Lynch said.
The indictment charged him with soliciting and accepting two bribe payments from Media World, an affiliate of Spanish media company Imagina Group. One payment was a "six-figure bribe" to be split among Trujillo and two other Guatemalans for media and marketing rights for 2018 World Cup qualifier matches, the indictment said.
The two other men, Brayan Jimenez and Rafael Salguero, were also indicted. Jimenez has served as president of Guatemala's soccer federation, and Salguero is a former FIFA executive committee member.
The second payment was a $200,000 bribe that Trujillo and Jimenez split in exchange for media and marketing rights to 2022 World Cup qualifier matches, the indictment said. Meetings about the bribes took place in Miami.
At a meeting in Chicago on July 9, weeks after a first round of football-related arrests, Trujillo openly discussed how he hid the bribe payments, the indictment said. Trujillo said at the meeting "that he did not think the payment would appear suspicious, as a sham contract had been created," the court document said.
Thursday's arrests and charges overshadowed the FIFA executive committee's approval the same day of a package of reforms to clean up the scandal-ridden organisation. There was more concern for FIFA on Friday when Europe's powerful clubs criticised the reforms.
The European Club Association, which represents more than 200 clubs including big names such as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, said members were "not prepared to be further ignored" after they were not involved in the FIFA Reform Committee.
Nike was another company that said it was cooperating with authorities over a 1996 sports marketing contract with Brazil. Top Brazilian football officials were among those named in the indictment on Thursday with the bribery and kickback schemes. "There is no allegation in court documents that any employee was aware of or knowingly participated in any bribery scheme," Nike said in a statement.
