SAO PAULO: Carlos Chavez, Bolivia’s former football supremo who was wanted by the United States FIFAGate investigators, has died in hospital in Brazil writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

The ex-treasurer of the scandal-battered South American confederation CONMEBOL, had been treated for cancer since April at the Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo.

He had been admitted to hospital in Bolivia in November 2015, four months after having been detained on corruption charges, and was granted permission to fly to Brazil for cancer treatment in January this year.

Chavez became president of the FBF in 2006. He was arrested in July 2015 on corruption charges not linked directly to the FIFAGate scandal but on  information passed on by the US authorities. He had always denied wrongdoing.

One of the charges concerned the misappropriation of some of the $400,000 raised by a 2013 friendly between Bolivia and Brazil which had been staged to raise funds for the family of a fan, Kevin Beltran, who had been killed at an earlier game.

In August 2015, one month after his arrest, Chavez was sacked as president of the Bolivian federation despite writing a protestation of innocence and appeal for help to the then FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Three months later Chavez was listed by US prosecutors among 16 newly-indicted FIFAGate suspects. He was contesting the extradition process when he was taken ill.

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