NEW YORK: Luis Bedoya, one-time Colombian football supremo and FIFA exco member, has told the FIFAGate trial in New York how he kept his bribes income secret from his wife and family.
Bedoya said many of the millions generated through the slicing of commercial contracts were deposited in a Swiss bank account.
Asked, on Tuesday, whether anyone would have been able to claim the monies had he died, Bedoya said: “No.” No-one else knew until United States investigators began following the electronic wire trail which led to Bedoya being indicted along with another 40 senior football executives in South and North America.
Bedoya, a member of FIFA’s executive committee in 2014-15, had pleaded guilty in 2015 to racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy, charges carrying maximum sentences of 20 years each. He has said he had accepted more than $3 million in bribes from 2007-15.
In cross-examination he described discussing with Napout, Burga and former Ecuador FA president Luis Chiriboga the Swiss bank account in which he received money from Mariano Jinkis of Full Play, a media company at the heart of bribery distribution. He had not divulged the account’s existence to his wife.
Bedoya said he now feared for the safety of himself and his wife if they returned to Colombia. The US authorities were paying the rent for a two-bedroom apartment for them and, in return for co-operation, had been assured of eventual access to a witness protection programme.
Bedoya was thus a prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of fellow former soccer bosses Jose Maria Marin (Brazil), Manuel Burga (Peru) and Juan Angel Napout (Paraguay).
All three have denied corruption charges in a trial which has heard evidence of widespread football bribery also including allegations concerning the Qatar 2022 World Cup award.
In cross-examination Bedoya said he believed the late Julio Grondona of Argentina, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay and Ricardo Teixeira of Brazil to have been “the most corrupt people in [South American governing body] CONMEBOL.”
Leoz, a former president of CONMEBOL, is contesting extradition from Paraguay; Teixeira cannot be extradited from Brazil because of a citizenship protection clause in the national constitution.
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