NEW YORK: The former El Salvador football supremo has been sentenced to 16 months in prison after pleading guilty to a charge arising from the FIFAGate scandal.

Reynaldo Vasquez, 66, ex-president of the Federacion Salvadorena de Futbol (FESFUT), was sentenced by United States District Judge Pamela Chen in Brooklyn, New York.

In pleading guilty last year to a racketeering conspiracy charge, Vasquez acknowledged receiving a $350,000 bribe in 2012 from Miami-based Media World, which brokers rights to broadcasts targeting Spanish speakers, to induce FESFUT to arrange media and marketing rights to qualifier matches for the 2018 World Cup.

So far the FIFAGate investigation by the US authorities has yielded 27 guilty pleas and two convictions at trial.

Breon Peace, the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said in a statement that Vasquez and the other defendants “disgraced themselves by lining their pockets with hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, at the expense of a beautiful sport.”

Vasquez led FESFUT in 2009 and 2010. FIFA’s ethics committee banned him from football for life and fined him 500,000 Swiss francs ($512,610.21) in October 2019.

Judgment is still awaited, notably, in the case of Jeff Webb, a former head of Central and North American Confederation, while his predecessor, Jack Warner, is continuing to fight a US extradition demand from Trinidad & Tobago.

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