NEW YORK: A defence plea to halt the FIFAGate trial, on the premise that commercial bribes – or ‘commissions’ – are legal in South America, has been rejected by Judge Pamela Chen.

The submission requesting that the trial be voided was put the Judge Chen by defence lawyers for former South American football federation supremos Jose Maria Marin (Brazil), Juan Angel Napout (Paraguay) and Manuel Burga (Peru).

All three have pleaded not guilty to bribery and money-laundering corruption charges arising out of the United States Justice Department’s investigation into a $200m scandal in football in the Americas.

Friday’s hearing was largely taken up with evidence about the money trail of millions of dollars of bribes via banks in Switzerland, Andorra, the US, China and various offshore tax havens plus expenditure on apartments and luxury consumer goods.

The monies were sourced from sports rights companies to acquire lucrative television contracts to major international and national football tournaments.

The thousands of transactions involved, among others, subsidiary companies Full Play-Cross Trade, Traffic and TyC were explained by an agent of the US Treasury questioned by the prosecutor Sam Nitze.

Nitze crossed Excel spreadsheets of the payments of these companies to the defendants with emails and hotel records that show, for example, that the defendant Juan Ángel Napout, former president of the Paraguay and South American federations, had travelled to Buenos Aires every time he received payment orders.

Luxury apartment

The presumed bribes delivered to Napout almost monthly between 2010 and 2015 generated a Cross Trade payment order – also exhibited to the jury- for amounts of up to $150,000 per month, under the initials “JAN” or “Honda”, as Napout was identified by Full Play in these registers.

In addition FullPlay’s owners Mariano and Hugo Jinkis rented for him a luxurious penthouse in La Barra, near Punta del Este in Uruguay, in the summer of 2014, for $20,000.

The prosecutor showed the jury photos of the furnishing and a view out at the Atlantic, including a pool on the terrace and the bathrooms in butter-colored marble. Another photo showed a smiling Napout in Bermuda shorts in front of the spa, with his wife and four children and Hugo Jinkis.

The prosecutor also showed payments of millions allegedly made in bribes to Marín, former head of Brazil’s CBF, and expenditure for tens of thousands of dollars in Hermes, Chanel, Brioni and other luxury stores in New York, Paris and Las Vegas, supposedly with the money of those bribes received in the account of his company Firelli in Morgan Stanley in New York.

Further documentation showed how Marín’s predecessor, Ricardo Teixeira, one of the 42 individuals indicted by the FBI, was shown to have bought in January 2012 the mansion of Anna Kournikova in Miami, apparently in cash for $7.425m through an entity named Ocha Properties.

Nitze also showed documents that in his opinion prove that the Jinkis passed on hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes for Manuel Burga, ex-FA president in Peru and identified as “Fiat” in the account book of Santiago Peña, an employee of Full Play.

Burga’s lawyers say his client never received any money but prosecutors maintain that at least part of that money was kept by former Venezuelan FA chief Rafael Esquivel and other amounts were deposited by Esquivel for Burga in his Wells Fargo account in Miami.

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