ZURICH (Reuters) – Former South American football boss Juan Angel Napout has been banned for life from the sport and fined one million Swiss francs ($1 million) by FIFA, more than one year after being given a nine-year jail sentence by a U.S. Court.
Napout was sentenced by a court in Brooklyn, New York, in August last year and also ordered him to pay more than $4.3 million in financial penalties for crimes stemming from the corruption scandal that engulfed global soccer body FIFA in 2015.
He had been found guilty by a jury the previous December of racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. He had denied the charges.
Napout served as the head of the national soccer federation in his native Paraguay from 2007 to 2014 and then of South American soccer’s governing body CONMEBOL for one year until he was arrested in Zurich in December 2015 and extradited.
FIFA said in a statement that its investigations referred to “bribery schemes during the period from 2012 to 2015 in relation to his role in awarding contracts to companies for the media and marketing rights to CONMEBOL competitions.”
FIFA said he was barred “from taking part in any football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) at both national and international level.”
(Reporting by Brian Homewood; Editing by Toby Davis and Pritha Sarkar)
