A former executive working under the 21st Century Fox banner was convicted of bribing soccer officials to win lucrative broadcast rights to tournaments while a second former executive accused of the same crime was acquitted. Uruguay sports-marketing company Full Play was also convicted
(Bloomberg) — A former executive working under the 21st Century Fox banner was convicted of bribing soccer officials to win lucrative broadcast rights to tournaments while a second former executive accused of the same crime was acquitted. Uruguay sports-marketing company Full Play was also convicted
Hernan Lopez was convicted Thursday of engaging in wire-fraud and money-laundering conspiracies for getting inside information to secure US broadcasting rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments. His former colleague Carlos Martinez was found not guilty by a jury after about 3 1/2 days of deliberations.
Their trial, in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, stemmed from an international crackdown on cheating at FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, that burst on the scene with a predawn raid at a luxury Zurich hotel in May 2015.
The investigation brought down some of the biggest names in the sport, including Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, who was ousted as FIFA’s president after 17 years in the role. Two other former FIFA officials were convicted and sentenced after a 2017 trial, with the US securing dozens of other guilty pleas as part of the crackdown.
Meanwhile, sports-marketing company Full Play Group, which was also on trial in Brooklyn for allegedly paying millions of dollars a year in bribes to officials in Conmebol, the governing body for South American soccer, was also convicted of all six counts it faced.
Carlos Ortiz, a lawyer for Full Play, told jurors in closing arguments March 2 that South American soccer bosses eagerly accepted such payments for generations and that’s just how business was done.
Lopez, Martinez and Full Play were all charged in April 2020.
Lopez was the chief executive officer of Fox International Channels, and Martinez was a “high-ranking executive” at Fox Latin America Channel, an affiliate of the unit, according to the indictment.
Fox International was part of 21st Century Fox which Fox Corp. spun off and sold to Walt Disney Co. in 2019.
The defense assailed the testimony of star witness Alejandro Burzaco, who spent 11 days on the stand during the trial. Burzaco, a former chief executive officer of sports marketing company Torneos y Competencias SA, testified that the company sought to use the TV rights “to expand its Fox signal in all of the Americas, from Argentina to the USA.”
The case is US v. Webb, 15-CR-252, US District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
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