KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: “Ricardo Terra Teixeira sends his regrets but the former president of the Brazilian football confederation, former executive committee grandee of FIFA, former son-in-law of Joao Havelange, former business partner of now-Barcelona president Sandro Rosell, will be prevented by ill health from accepting your kind invitation. . .”

Or, at least, words to that effect.

Teixeira, devourer of ISL bribes, has been summonsed at answer to a Brazilian parliamentary inquiry into the strange case of the national team’s vanishing friendly match cash.

Now esconced in self-imposed exile in Miami, Teixeira was not alone in receiving such a summons to appear.

A commission of congress, the lower house, opened a public hearing in response to a state report that a third of the match fees were not deposited with the CBF but spirited to accounts in tax havens.

The report stated that one slice of the monies was transferred to Uptrend, a New Jersey-based shell company whose owners had included Teixeira and Rosell. Other monies went to deposit accounts in the Cayman Islands and Andorra.

Business links

Early this week a group of Barcelona members sought to launch, in vain, a vote of no confidence in Rosell’s stewardship of the club. One of their complaints concerned his business links with the disgraced Teixeira.

The hearing is being led by congressman Arnaldo Jordy who has issued further appearance invitations to the CBF, federal prosecutors, the AND Bank of Andorra, the United States Internal Revenue Services and two investigative journalists.

Jordy’s inquiry reasoning states:

“New allegations by Estado of São Paulo reveal a money laundering scheme concerning revenue from games and sponsorship of the Brazilian national football team, in which one third of the shares of the 24 games since November 2006 was directed to Uptrend for Development, a company based in the United States and led by the current Barcelona president Sandro Rosell.

“Sandro Rosell is a personal friend of the former president of the CBF, Ricardo Teixeira, who at the time headed the organization that organises the sport in the country.

Suspicions

“It is also disturbing, after so many scandals in which a leading role has been exercised invariably by unscrupulous leaders, that the business and Selecao of the CBF remain under suspicion.

“The country is investing heavily in hosting a World Cup which should help to improve and not harm the national image and thus for the country’s passion for football to be compromised by corruption cannot be tolerated.

“The least that can be expected, on the eve of the event being hosted by Brazil, is that the complaint is dealt with expeditiously and with transparency.”

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