Top FIFA suspect surrenders
Print Edition
AN Argentine businessman who was indicted by US authorities in connection with the FIFA corruption case turned himself in to Italian police yesterday.
Bolzano police official Giuseppe Tricarico said that Alejandro Burzaco arrived at the local police station yesterday morning with an Italian and Spanish-speaking lawyer.
Tricarico said Burzaco, who is accused of being involved in a US$110 million bribe, is in a jail cell in the northern Italian city pending a hearing later on whether to confirm the arrest, as is procedure in Italy.
The judge will then decide whether Burzaco represents a flight risk or can be given house arrest. Burzaco, who has dual Argentine-Italian nationality, has a house in Bolzano.
Burzaco was one of 14 people indicted by US authorities on May 27 on bribery, vote-rigging and other corruption charges. Seven of the indicted men were arrested during dawn raids on a luxury Zurich hotel.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who has not been officially implicated in the investigation, won re-election to a fifth, four-term on May 29. But four days later, as the scandal intensified, the 79-year-old Blatter said he would resign and start the process of looking for a successor.
In a separate Swiss investigation, authorities seized documents at FIFA headquarters in their probe into the bidding contests for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.
The 50-year-old Burzaco was named on Interpol’s most wanted list last Wednesday, along with five other individuals with ties to FIFA.
Burzaco and father-son duo of Hugo, 70, and Mariano Jinkis, 40, also from Argentina, were named in the US indictment saying they bribed soccer officials in exchange for the media and commercial rights to international tournaments.
Argentine Secretary of Security Sergio Berni said yesterday that the whereabouts of the Jinkis’ was still unknown. Berni told Radio del Plata that authorities were trying to find them.
Burzaco, who is the president of sports marketing company Torneos y Competencias, and the Jinkis’ merged their companies to form part of Datisa, which obtained the exclusive worldwide rights to the 2015, 2019 and 2023 Copa America tournaments as well as the 2016 centenary edition of the South American championship.
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