U.S. Prosecutors Charge Former Fox Sports Executives in FIFA Bribery Case -- Update
April 06 2020 - 11:09PM
Dow Jones News
By Dylan Tokar and Joshua Robinson
Two former Fox Sports executives have been charged with
participating in an alleged scheme to pay millions of dollars in
bribes to soccer officials in exchange for broadcasting rights.
Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez helped bribe officials at
Conmebol, FIFA's soccer confederation in South America, according
to a U.S. grand jury indictment unsealed Monday. The two men were
high-ranking executives of a Fox Sports international subsidiary,
where they were responsible for developing Fox's sports
broadcasting business in South America, prosecutors said.
The charges are part of a sprawling corruption investigation
into FIFA that was first revealed in 2015, when federal prosecutors
in New York unsealed racketeering and bribery related charges
against some of the organization's most prominent figures.
Mr. Lopez, a 47-year-old dual U.S. and Argentine citizen, who
served as chief executive of the Fox Sports subsidiary, and Mr.
Martinez, a 51-year-old dual U.S. and Mexican citizen who served as
its president, were charged with wire fraud and money laundering,
according to the indictment.
"We are certain a jury will swiftly exonerate Carlos, as these
charges are nothing more than stale fiction," Steven McCool, a
lawyer for Mr. Martinez, said in a statement.
Matthew Umhofer, a lawyer for Mr. Lopez, attacked the government
for bringing the charges against his client. "The indictment
contains nothing more than a single paragraph about Mr. Lopez that
alleges nothing remotely improper," Mr. Umhofer said in a
statement.
Mr. Lopez now serves as the chief executive of the podcast
company Wondery, and is an executive producer on an upcoming drama
based on the life of tiger breeder Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also
known as Joe Exotic, the subject of Netflix's recent hit series,
"Tiger King."
Prosecutors on Monday also charged Gerard Romy, a 65-year-old
former executive of a Spanish media company, and Full Play Group
SA, a sports marketing company based in Argentina, with wire fraud,
money laundering and racketeering.
A lawyer for Mr. Romy declined to comment. A lawyer for Full
Play said the company would plead not guilty to the charges and
planned to vigorously defend itself at trial. The company, along
with Messrs. Lopez and Martinez, are scheduled to be arraigned on
Thursday.
In addition to charging the four new defendants, the latest
indictment for the first time directly alleges that several of
FIFA's top executives received bribes to support Russia and Qatar's
respective bids to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. The Qatari
and Russian bid teams have denied wrongdoing.
The vote to pick the hosts, held in Zurich in December 2010,
became one of the most notorious moments in soccer history. In a
field that included strong contenders such as England, the U.S. and
Spain, long-shot campaigns by Russia and Qatar came out on top in a
ballot of 22 members of FIFA's ruling executive committee. Of those
22, more than half eventually left the organization under ethical
or criminal investigation.
The moments that allegedly swung the vote, Monday's indictment
said, came in payments amounting to millions of dollars funneled
through shell companies in the weeks before executives gathered in
Switzerland.
Former FIFA executive Jack Warner, for example, allegedly
received some $5 million to pick Russia as the tournament's 2018
host, the indictment said. Mr. Warner, who was indicted in the U.S.
in 2015, has been fighting extradition from his native Trinidad and
Tobago.
Prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern
District of New York have secured 26 guilty pleas and convicted two
individuals at trial as part of the investigation into FIFA. Fox
Sports was first implicated in the case during a trial in Brooklyn
in 2017, when a government witness testified that a joint venture
partly owned by the company had signed a phony contract in 2008
with an Argentine media company to facilitate $3.7 million in
bribes.
A spokeswoman for Fox Sports declined to comment Monday on the
indictment. The company at the time of the 2017 trial said it
hadn't known or approved of any bribes.
Fox Sports parent Fox Corp. and Wall Street Journal parent News
Corp share common ownership. The subsidiary where Messrs. Lopez and
Martinez worked, Fox International Channels, was absorbed by Walt
Disney Co. in 2019. Disney didn't return a request for comment.
Write to Dylan Tokar at dylan.tokar@wsj.com and Joshua Robinson
at joshua.robinson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 06, 2020 22:54 ET (02:54 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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