FIFA ethics office launches action against Trujillo after US guilty pleas
ZURICH: FIFA’s ethics committee has launched investigatory proceedings against Miguel Trujillo, the Florida-based Colombian agent who has pleaded guilty to FIFAGate charges in New York writes KEIR RADNEDGE.
Trujillo is one of 42 people and companies indicted in the scandal which which has sent shock waves through the leadership of world football.
He also pleaded guilty to one count of filing a false tax return and agreed to forfeit $495,000
Trujillo has been negotiating match fixtures and television rights on behalf of the Honduran national team for the past decade. He has been a FIFA match agent since 2006, working through Media World which has controlled image rights for the national teams of Honduras, Guatemala, Haití and El Salvador.
Last December Alfredo Hawitt, the head of the Honduras football federation and then president of the central and north American confederation, was arrested while attending a FIFA meeting on a FIFAGate indictment. He was subsequently extradited to the US.
A statement from the ethics committee said: “Having examined all of the relevant evidence and based on Miguel Trujillo’s guilty plea before the federal court in New York, the investigatory chamber has opened formal proceedings against Mr Trujillo. As a licensed FIFA match agent, he was bound by the FIFA Code of Ethics.
“The investigatory chamber will investigate payments from Mr Trujillo to several football officials. The chairman of the investigatory chamber, Dr Cornel Borbély . . . will examine all relevant evidence and hand over the case report in due course, along with recommendations, to the adjudicatory chamber.”
The original statement from the US DoJ about the charges facing Trujillo, said: “Starting in approximately 2008 and acting variously on behalf of multiple sports marketing companies and his own soccer business, Trujillo paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to high-ranking officials of FIFA, CONCACAF, and four soccer federations in Central America and the Caribbean in furtherance of multiple schemes involving media and marketing contracts and international friendly matches.”
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