SAO PAULO: A Brazilian lawyer has applied to the Supreme Court for an order seeking the extradition of Jose Maria Marin to Brazil and not to the United States writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

Marin, 83, was among the ‘Zurich Seven’ arrested last month in Switzerland on the eve of FIFA Congress and who are being detained pending the judgment of extradition applications from the United States Justice Department in the football corruption scandal.

Criminal lawyer Roosevelt Bormann, a former political aide to Marin, has applied for a court order without consulting the former president of the Brazilian football federation.

Bormann said he had been motivated by their “friendship of 40 years.” He worked for Marin during the early 1980s when the veteran administrator was governor of Sao Paulo under the military dictatorship.

This past week in Brazil it has been reported that Marin broke down in tears when visited in prison by associates.

He had been senior vice-president in the Brazilian football confederation to controversial Ricardo Teixeira and stepped up into the presidency by arrangement in March 2012 after the latter’s flight to Miami.

Consultancy

Simultaneously Marin also took over Teixeira’s role as president of the local organising committee for the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil. Reports in Brazil claimed that Teixeira retained a lucrative consultancy arrangement under the terms of the change of command.

After the World Cup Marin stepped down as CBF president to be succeeded by his former No2 in Sao Paulo state, Marco Polo del Nero. Both men were members of FIFA’s Olympic football committee ahead of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics next year.

Del Nero had taken Teixeira’s place on the FIFA executive committee. He fled back to Brazil from Zurich before FIFA Congress could begin for fear of arrest himself.

Marin’s lawyers have sought, so far in vain, for him to be released locally on house arrest because of his state of health.

He is allowed one prison visit per week and is allowed out of his cell once a day to walk in the secured prison garden.

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