RIO DE JANEIRO: One week after relinquishing power in Brazilian football Ricardo Teixeira has resigned from the executive committee of world federation FIFA writes KEIR RADNEDGE.
The controversial and ultimately disgraced 64-year-old delivered his decision in a letter to Nicolas Leoz, the Paraguayan president of CONMEBOL, the South American football confederation. A statement from CONMEBOL said the decision was “irrevocable” and had been taken for “personal reasons.”
FIFA has asked CONMEBOL to replace Teixeira as soon as possible which will almost certainly mean sending a stop-gap representative to next week’s exco meeting in Zurich.
A week ago Teixeira resigned as president of the Brazilian football federation and of the 2014 local organising authority. He was succeeded in both roles, on an interim basis, by the senior CBF vice-president Jose Marin.
Teixeira ascribed his resignations then to “health reasons” but he had come under increasing pressure over a string of scandals. One of the most enduring concern his alleged receipt of illicit payments from the former FIFA marketing partner ISL; the most recent concerns the financial fall-out from a friendly match in Brasilia between Brazil and Portugal in 2008.
The former son-in-law of long-time ex-FIFA president Joao Havelange, Teixeira has always denied all allegations against him and insisted that they did not affect him “because I don’t read the newspapers any more.”
He had been a member of the FIFA executive since 1994 and had been considered in Brazil – albeit nowhere else – as a possible presidential successor to Sepp Blatter.
His departure means FIFA has lost four members of its 24-person executive committee to corruption scandals in the last two years after Nigeria’s Amos Adamu, Oceania’s Reynald Temarii, Trinidad’s Jack Warner and the Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam who is contesting a lifetime ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The ongoing tensions between Teixeira and Brazilian state President Dilma Rousseff have been an awkward distraction at a time when the country ‘s politicians and constructors are already struggling to meet the timescale demanded by the proximity of the Confederations Cup ‘warm-up’ next year and the World Cup finals themselves in 2014.
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