By Andrew Warshaw
December 20 – Three months after disgraced former CONCACAF president Jeffrey Webb – not so long ago touted as a possible successor to Sepp Blatter – was banned for life, two more once all-powerful officials of the same confederation have suffered the same fate with Hondurans Alfredo Hawit (pictured) and Rafael Callejas thrown out of the game by FIFA’s ethics committee for taking bribes as part of the US-led football corruption scandal.
Hawit was a former FIFA vice-president but Callejas even ran the Honduras government having been state president from 1990 to 1994.
Amid the fallout from the scandal which uncovered a $200 million web of corruption and threw FIFA into turmoil, both are awaiting sentencing in the United States.
The move was hardly a surprise since FIFA’s ethics committee routinely imposes life bans on officials who have pleaded guilty. The committee said both men took bribes from marketing companies linked to awarding commercial rights to World Cup qualifying matches. Hawit was interim president of CONCACAF in succession to Webb when he was arrested in Zurich in December last year.
Hawit pleaded guilty in a federal court in New York in April to racketeering conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He admitted to having received “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes from two sports marketing companies seeking media rights for football matches and tournaments including 2014, 2018, and 2022 World Cup qualifiers.
Hawit is the third CONCACAF president to be banned for life since the scandal exploded in May last year, following the expulsion of Jack Warner (Hawit acted as interim president then as well), who is fighting extradition to the US in his native Trinidad and Tobago, and Webb, the latter also awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to racketeering charges.
Callejas, a member of FIFA’s Marketing and TV committee when he was indicted by American prosecutors, pleaded guilty in March to charges of racketeering and wire fraud conspiracy and admitted, like Hawit, accepting bribes in exchange for awarding marketing rights to World Cup tournament matches in 2014, 2018 and 2022. He was also president of the Honduras federation, FENAFUTH, from 2002-15 and is due to be sentenced at the end of January.
FIFA’s ethics committee said, in a statement, that the pair had broken rules on bribery and corruption, conflicts of interest, loyalty and duty of disclosure. “As a consequence, both officials are banned for life from all football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) at national and international level.”
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