One of seven FIFA officials detained in Switzerland in May
as a massive corruption scandal erupted has agreed to be extradited to the
United States, the Swiss justice ministry says.
The official is one of seven - all from South America or the
CONCACAF zone of North and Central America and the Caribbean - arrested in a
dawn raid on a Zurich hotel on May 27, accused by US authorities of involvement
in more than $US150 million ($A200 million) of bribes given for marketing deals
for football tournaments in North and South America.
The man had first objected to a US extradition request but
agreed on Thursday afternoon, becoming the first of the seven to do so, a
justice ministry spokesman told AFP.
He will however remain in Switzerland until US police come
to escort him to the United States - something they, according to Swiss law,
must do within 10 days, it said.
According to the ministry, the official awaiting extradition
stands accused by the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York
of "accepting bribes totalling millions of dollars in connection with the
sale of marketing rights to various sports marketing firms and keeping the
money for himself".
"The marketing rights in question pertain to the
broadcast of qualifying matches for the soccer World Cup, regional soccer
tournaments and continental soccer championships in North and South
America," the ministry said in a statement.
The seven held include Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands
and Eugenio Figueredo from Uruguay - both former FIFA vice presidents - and
Costa Rican Eduardo Li, who was supposed to join the FIFA Executive Committee
in May.
There was also Brazilian football federation chief Jose
Maria Marin, Nicaraguan Julio Rocha and Costas Takkas, a Briton who worked for
the Cayman islands federation and Rafael Esquivel, president of the Venezuelan
Football Federation.
Their May 27 arrests came a day before FIFA's annual
conference was about to begin, sparking a tsunami of a scandal.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter was re-elected to a new term at
the congress but, amid a storm of controversy over parallel US and Swiss
investigations, he quickly announced that he would stand down.
Blatter, 79, has not been implicated in either enquiry and again
strongly denied involvement in corruption in his column on Friday in the
in-house publication FIFA Weekly.
"I bear no responsibility for members of a government
(the FIFA Executive Committee) I have not myself elected. The FIFA President
must work with the people allotted him by the confederations. I therefore also
bear no responsibility whatsoever for the behaviour of these ExCo members on
their home turf," he wrote.
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