NEW YORK: The latest FIFAGate judgments in New York have seen two of the Traffic companies set up by the late Jose Hawilla fined for corruption offences concerning football marketing fraud writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

Traffic Sports International and Traffic Sports USA have been fined $500,000 each after pleading guilty in the five-year investigation which saw the indictment of more than 40 senior football and marketing executives.

The companies were also sentenced to one year of probation but had already indicated that they would cease trading as part of their cooperation with the judiciary.

Both admitted to the paying of bribes in exchange for the promotion rights of major national and international tournaments in Latin America.

Once one of Brazil’s richest businessmen, Hawilla was a witness for the prosecution in the trial in late 2017 which saw the corruption conviction and jailing of Jose Maria Marin, former president of the Brazilian confederation, and Juan Angel Napout, ex-president of the Paraguayan FA and the South American Confederation CONMEBOL.

Hawilla died in Sao Paulo last May aged at 74.

He was a former journalist who became a multi-millionaire after turning his hand to sports marketing and rights with the assistance and approval of former long-term FIFA president Joao Havelange and the latter’s son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira, for years himself head of the Brazilian football confederation (CBF) and a world federation executive member.

Hawilla created the Traffic agency which was once of the most powerful in Latin America before the entire edifice was brought tumbling down by the FIFAGate scandal. He had agreed to pay restitution of more than $150m to the United States authorities in a plea bargain deal which included giving evidence against Marin and Napout in New York last year.

Hawilla, who had needed oxygen provision as he gave evidence, was later permitted to return home to Brazil, despite awaiting sentence himself.

Hawilla began his career as a pitch reporter on a radio station in Rio Preto in the 1960s. He then worked as a reporter for Radio Bandeirantes and TV Globo, where he covered Formula 1 before concentrating on football.

In the 1980s he changed career and bought Traffic which had managed advertising on bus stops in major cities which provided a further connection to Havelange who, alongside sports administration career, had run the Comet bus business.

Traffic soon dominated the football stadia advertising business and became the largest sports marketing agency in first Brazil, then South America.

Hawilla moved into television by buying up a strong of local state television channels as well as the Bom Dia newspaper network and Diario de São Paulo. He also founded the TV7 broadcasting and programme production company.

################