KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS —- Nicolas Leoz and Ricardo Teixeira are the men with most to concern them as the Swiss and United States judiciaries work ever more closely to join the financial dots of the past two decades of the corruption culture within FIFA.

The Swiss Federal Office of Justice said in a statement that it had handed a first batch of evidence to US investigators working on the FIFAGate case which has seen 41 individuals and marketing companies indicted in a $200m corruption scandal.

Wanted men: Teixeira (above) and Leoz

The evidence comprised information concerning 50 accounts in 10 different banks which may assist in the pursuit of “criminal proceedings in the USA . . . to reconstruct the flow of funds between different accounts.”

In addition, the Swiss FOJ responded to the US request for legal assistance by freezing some $80m in assets in 13 bank accounts. Earlier this autumn Swiss Attorney-General Michael Lauber also volunteered the information that property had been seized into inquiries into money-laundering.

ISL commissions

Significantly, the US authorities have also requested records relating to the 2018-2022 World Cup bid process and to the earlier scandal involving the bankrupted former FIFA marketing partner ISL.

Senior FIFA officials who accepted illicit commissions from ISL for TV and marketing rights including Leoz,  the Paraguayan who was then president of the South American confederation CONMEBOL, and Teixeira, then the president of the Brazilian federation.

Both men were also . . . members of the FIFA exco which awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar as well as now having been indicted by the US Department of Justice.

Leoz is contesting extradition from Paraguay, partly on the  grounds of age and ill health.

Teixeira, the former son-in-law of ex-FIFA president Joao Havelange, is safe while he remains home in Rio de Janeiro since Brazilian citizens cannot be extradited. There remains a possibility – but only a very slim one – of Brazilian prosecutors taking action against him.

The FIFAGate scandal burst into the open on May 27 when seven senior FIFA directors and marketing officials were arrested in Zurich on the eve of the world federation’s congress on US extradition warrants. Two further arrests were undertaken in Zurich on December 2.

Extradition was accepted and undertaken in the cases of Jeffrey Webb (then president of the CONCACAF central/north American region), José Maria Marin (ex-president of the Brazilian CBF), Juan Angel Napout (then president of CONMEBOL) and Costa Rica’s Eduardo Li.

Another former CONMEBOL president, Eugenio Figueredo, has been extradited to his native Uruguay to face corruption charges there.

Four other men are still in the Swiss ‘system’.

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