August 16 – FIFA has banned for life a prominent official who served on its own audit and compliance committee that is supposed to weed out financial wrongdoing.
FIFA’s ethics committee found Bolivia’s Romer Osuna guilty of being part of a bribery scheme from 2012-15 while awarding contracts for the media and marketing rights to South American competitions.
Osuna has served as both treasurer and an executive committee member at CONMEBOL. As well as being banned from any role in football, he was also fined CHF 1 million.
FIFA said the proceedings against the Bolivian referred in particular to his role in awarding contracts to companies for media and marketing rights to CONMEBOL competitions between 2012 and 2015.
An ethics committee statement said: “The adjudicatory chamber found that Mr Osuna had breached art. 27 (Bribery) of the 2018 edition of the FIFA Code of Ethics and, as a result, sanctioned him with a ban for life on taking part in any football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) at both national and international level.
“In addition, a fine in the amount of CHF 1,000,000 has been imposed on Mr Osuna. The decision was notified to Mr Osuna today, the date on which the ban comes into force.”
Whilst FIFA made a point of mentioning Osuna’s past CONMEBOL roles, tellingly it did not refer to the fact he had a key position within the world governing body.
Osuna was one those indicted by US authorities as part of the sweeping FifaGate corruption scandal involving up to $200 million. He was alleged to have “solicited and received millions of dollars in bribe payments during his years as treasurer of CONMEBOL” and “maintained his position as a member of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, a committee in charge of, among other things, developing proposals for organizational reform.”
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