RIO DE JANEIRO: Legal authorities in Andorra have requested the cooperation of their counterparts in Brazil in an investigaion into suspected money laundering and corruption allegations concerning Ricardo Teixeira.

The former FIFA executive committee member and long-time Brazilian football supremo has already been indicted by the United States Department of Justice over the $200m FIFAGate scandal. While he remains in Brazil, however, he is beyond the reach of US law enforcement.

Media reports in Brazil claim the US authorities have asked Switzerland for information about accounts linked to Brazilian banks and also requested cooperation from Andorra, on the suspicion that some of Teixeira’s money was moved there.

The suspicion is that the Andorra ‘route’ was used when Teixeira and his ex-father-in-law, former FIFA president Joao Havelange, paid back $2.4m to ‘buy off’ a Swiss judicial process over the $20m or more they had reapeed in illicit payments from the bankupted ISL marketing company.

Reportedly the money was transferred to an account held by Peter Nobel account, the personal lawyer of Sepp Blatter, who had been general sevretary of FIFA during the Havelange years before succeeding him as president in 1998.

At one stage Teixeira is known to have sought – in vain – a residency right in Andorra with the assistance of one of his old friends and business associates Sandro Rosell, the former president of Barcelona.

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