April 4 – Just when it is striving to shake off its tainted past, CONCACAF is having to deal with yet another painful sanction slapped on one of its past federation bosses.
This time the culprit is former Guatemalan football chief Brayan Jimenez who has been thrown out of football for life by FIFA’s ethics committee.
Jimenez, a former member of FIFA’s committee for Fair Play and Social Responsibility, was found guilty last summer by a Federal Court in New York on counts of racketeering and wire fraud as part of the US probe into widespread football-related corruption over 20 years. Four months after initially pleading not guilty he changed his plea and faces up to 20 years in prison.
The U.S. district attorney said at the time of Jimenez’s plea bargain that the bribes he accepted totalled “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in awarding media and marketing rights for his country’s qualifier matches for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Whatever the verdict when he is sentenced on April 28 as one of those indicted in the United States, he won’t be returning to football. The ethics committee said in a statement that Jimenez, who headed the Guatemala FA from 2009 to 2015, had been found to have violated six articles of FIFA’s code of ethics.
It said that Jimenez “asked for and received bribes” from sports marketing companies in relation to the award of television and sponsorship rights for World Cup qualifiers in Central America, and for Guatemala’s participation in international friendlies.
“As a consequence, the official is banned for life from all football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) at national and international level,” the statement said.
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