KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING —- Jose Maria Marin, the Brazilian football supremo jailed in the FIFAGATE scandal which shook the world game, has died in Sao Paulo aged 93.

Marin, a close ally in Brazilian football of the similarly disgraced Ricardo Teixeira, had earlier earned notoriety for his anti-leftist roles within the military dictatorship between the mid-1960s and 1980s.

Between 1950 and 1952 Marin scored five goals in 20 appearances as – coincidentally – a right winger for São Paulo. He dropped down to more modest clubs while studying to qualify as a lawyer in 1955. Subsequently he built a political career at city and state levels and was briefly governor of São Paulo from 1982 to 1983.

The transition to democracy saw Marin divert his focus into sports politics. In 1982 he became president of the São Paulo football federation and was head of Brazil’s delegation at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

By now Marin was working ever more closely with Teixeira, the then son-in-law of FIFA president Joao Havelange. He rose to senior vice-president of the CBF and then, at 79 in 2012, took over as cartola {‘top hat’) after Teixeira quit for accepting bribes from ISL, FIFA’s marketing partner.

The appointment of Marin was confirmed even though, two months earlier, he had been caught on TV pocketing goalkeeper Matheus Caldeira’s winners medal at the São Paulo Youth Cup awards. Marin later dismissed the incident as “a joke.”

Marin automatically inherited Teixeira’s roles as head of Brazil’s 2014 World Cup organising committee and on the then all-powerful FIFA executive committee. But while the tournament was perceived to be an organisational success, it brought sporting humiliation with Brazil’s 7-1 defeat by Germany in the semi-finals.

Zurich arrests

One year later Marin was among seven FIFA powerbrokers detained in Zurich on the eve of congress at the behest of the United States Department of Justice. He was extradited and tried in New York for racketeering, wire fraud and money-laundering in accepting bribes over broadcasting and marketing rights awards for CONMEBOL, CONCACAF and Brazil’s domestic cup tournaments.

The prosecution alleged that Marin had received $1.5m in one particular deal for the award of TV rights to the Copa America and Copa Libertadores. Subsequently he spent $118,000 on designer clothes, $20,977.15 at an Hermes store in Paris, $50,000 with Bulgari in Las Vegas, $10,070.94 at Chanel in New York and $34,295 at New York’s Hermes.

Marin vainly pleaded not guilty and, in 2017, was sentenced to 48 months in prison and fined $1.2m. He was also ordered to pay $137,532.60 in restitution to FIFA and CONMEBOL.

Life ban

A year later Marin was banned from football for life by FIFA and fined a further one million Swiss francs. The CBF hastily changed the title of its new headquarters which had been named initially in Marin’s honour.

In a plea to the court for clemency, Marin stated: “Football has been a great love but now it’s become a big nightmare . . . Christ carried a cross. I carry two. I carry mine and my wife’s, who has nothing to do with it.”

He was released early, in March 2020 from Allentown penitentiary in Pennsylvania, because of health concerns during the Covid pandemic.

Jose Maria Marin, born May 6, 1932, died July 20, 2025.

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