From mafia organization to victim, Conmebol celebrates the arrival of corruption money: “It’s spectacular”

“It’s spectacular.” The South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) did not mince words on Wednesday to define its sensations at the recovery of part of the money that poured into the gigantic corruption scheme known as FIFAGate.

“It’s very good for us, it’s spectacular. It took a lot of courage to uncover the pot and come to this,” Gonzalo Belloso, Conmebol’s deputy secretary general and development director, told Around the Rings.

The story of corruption in the upper echelons of world soccer added a new chapter to the saga that began in spectacular fashion in 2015, when the top leadership of FIFA and virtually every confederation was swept up in the FBI-led investigation.

The news this time is positive for soccer: FIFA, Conmebol, and Concacaf will receive $201 million recovered from those corruption schemes. And much of that money will be overseen by the FIFA Foundation, which is headed by former Argentine President Mauricio Macri.

“I am very pleased that the illegitimately stolen money is now returning to soccer to fulfill its true purpose, its proper purpose from the beginning,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in a statement.

The “indemnity,” according to Infantino, compensates the three entities for “several decades of corruption schemes in soccer”. The sum was taken from the bank accounts of the former officials involved for years in the soccer corruption schemes for which they were prosecuted.

Of that $201 million, $71 million corresponds to Conmebol. Belloso, a former soccer player, explained to ATR how this success was achieved for the three confederations.

“When FIFAGate occurred we did a forensic audit and showed that many of those funds that were in the United States, and in some cases in South America, were soccer funds. Conmebol was at that time a mafia entity according to the U.S. justice system. Through the audit we were able to become a victim entity, so we were able to be plaintiffs and begin to participate in all the claims that were made.

“What the U.S. courts ruled after many years of work is this refund and the way in which we can use this money. We will allocate it to the Evolution program, which is dedicated to everything but professional soccer. We will use it for soccer development, but we will not be able to use it for infrastructure. We can use it for competitions, education and many things that we do on a daily basis”.

Everything indicates that corruption money will continue to flow to the three entities. Or at least to Conmebol.

“We already recovered a lot of money in Switzerland and Paraguay that the Leoz family had, and some other leaders like wig and other funds in Switzerland, so we continue in the line of trying to do justice.”

When Belloso speaks of Leoz he is referring to Nicolás Leoz, powerful president of Conmebol for years and who died in 2019 while in prison, albeit ill in a hospital.

Conmebol represented nine of the ten South American federations, only Chile, facing its own legal action, was left out. Ten million dollars of the recovered funds will be distributed among these nine countries.

According to Belloso, the Evolution Program “is having very good results”.

“We demanded, for example, that the youth and junior teams be permanent, which in most countries they were not. That program implied $100,000, we could take it to $2 million and aim very much at certain objectives. Adding more competition with other continents to raise the level, that is the idea. And to support junior club tournaments, which are still lacking. We have four or five years to develop this.”

FIFA has similar plans. It said in a statement: “The funds will go to the newly created World Football Forgiveness Fund, established under the auspices of the FIFA Foundation to finance football-related projects that positively impact communities around the world.”

Infantino added his “sincere thanks to the U.S. judicial authorities for their work on these matters, for their speed and efficiency in reaching a conclusion and for their trust in general.”

“The truth is that, thanks to their intervention in 2015, we have radically changed FIFA from the toxic organization of those days to transform it into a highly valued and trustworthy global governing body,” he added.

However, the toll of corruption in soccer continues and is evident. Reynaldo Vasquez, the former president of El Salvador’s soccer federation, pleaded guilty this week to a charge of racketeering conspiracy involving the payment of bribes to organize and broadcast matches. Vásquez, currently under house arrest in the United States, could be extradited to his home country to be sentenced to prison.