KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING —- The ethics committee of world football federation FIFA has reinstated its lifetime expulsion of former Peru FA supremo Manuel Burga.
A statement from the adjudicatory chamber of the Ethics Committee said the former member of both the CONMEBOL executive committee and the FIFA development committee had been “issued with a lifetime ban from taking part in all football-related activities and ordered to pay a fine amounting to CHF 1m after having been determined to have participated in bribery schemes and accepted undue pecuniary advantages.”
Burga was one of the South American football bosses accused in the original FIFAGate investigation undertaken by the United States Department of Justice in 2015. He was banned initially in July 2019 but appealed to the Court of Aebitration for Sport which quashed the suspension and reverted the case back to FIFA.
The latest FIFA statement added:
“After having conducted a hearing and upon careful analysis of the evidence provided before the adjudicatory chamber, in addition to the evidence collected during the investigations conducted by the investigatory chamber in the applicable proceedings, the adjudicatory chamber was comfortably satisfied that Mr Burga Seoane had breached articles 13 (General rules of conduct), 15 (Loyalty), 19 (Conflicts of interest), 20 (Offering and accepting gifts or other benefits) and 21 (Bribery and corruption) of the FIFA Code of Ethics, 2012 edition.”
Corruption charge
Burga appealed on the strength of having been cleared on a corruption charge in a New York court in December 2017, after the scandal which shook FIFA to its core.
He had been on trial alongside Brazilian confederation president Jose Maria Marin and CONMEBOL’S Paraguayan president Juan Angel Napout. The later pair were both found guilty and jailed. However the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on Burga who did crosswords and read historical fiction during the court deliberations.
He was allowed to fly flew home to Peru after the end of the case despite US prosecutors’ insistence that they remained determined to pursue him over further charges concerning wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies in connection with media rights to the Copa Libertadores, Copa America and Copa America Centenario. Burga always denied guilt.
The FIFAGate scandal exploded in May 2015 when seven senior football bosses were arrested in Zurich on US extradition warrants on the eve of FIFA Congress.
Webb still waiting
One of them, Jeff Webb, one-time FIFA vice-president and president of central/north American federation CONCACAF, is still awaiting sentencing.
He is understood to have admitted racketeering, money laundering and fraud charges drawn up in the $200m football fraud investigation but to be bargaining an eventual sentence against the information which can incriminate other FBI targets.
These include, most notably Jack Warner who was Webb’s predecessor as CONCACAF supremo and is fighting extradition from Trinidad and Tobago on similar FIFAGate corruption and money-laundering charges.
Warner, who headed CONCACAF from 1990-2011, is accused by US justice of receiving $10m from the South African government in exchange for three World Cup bid votes.
Some 42 individuals and companies were indicted by the US DoJ , initially on the evidence provided by American Chuck Blazer, former general secretary of CONCACAF and member of the FIFA executive committee. He died in July 2017.