New Delhi: Two Argentine sports marketing executives, Hugo Jinkis and his son Mariano Jinkis, admitted in a Brooklyn federal court in New York to paying tens of millions of dollars in commercial bribes to football officials to secure lucrative broadcast and marketing rights.
However, the duo entered a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with US federal prosecutors, allowing them to avoid a formal criminal trial over their 2015 corruption. The US government agreed to dismiss the wire fraud conspiracy charges by September 2027 if both maintain clean criminal records, allowing them to bypass a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
Nonetheless, as part of the settlement, Hugo, 81, and Mariano, 51, will forfeit over $50 million.
“The defendants and their co-conspirators corrupted the enterprise by engaging in various criminal activities, including fraud, bribery and money laundering. Two generations of soccer officials abused their positions of trust for personal gain, frequently through an alliance with unscrupulous sports marketing executives who shut out competitors and kept highly lucrative contracts for themselves through the systematic payment of bribes and kickbacks,” prosecutors said.
They added that football officials allegedly conspired to solicit and accept more than $150 million in illegal bribes and kickbacks in exchange for guaranteeing exclusive backing for sports marketing executives, who agreed to make the bribes.
Also read: Mussolini’s great-grandson debuts for Italian football club. His relative unveiled stadium
What’s the 2015 corruption scandal?
The 2015 FIFA corruption scandal was a massive international bribery crackdown led by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). It exposed decades of systemic corruption, racketeering, and money laundering at the highest levels of global football governance.
It rocked FIFA and continental confederations in South America (CONMEBOL) and North America (CONCACAF).
The scandal exploded on 27 May, 2015, when Swiss police conducted a raid at a luxury hotel in Zurich, arresting seven top FIFA officials on behalf of US authorities just days before the presidential election of FIFA.
“The next few months will not be easy for FIFA. I’m sure more bad news may follow. But it is necessary to begin to restore trust in our organisation,” former FIFA President Joseph Sepp Blatter had said after the charges came to the public. “I know many people hold me ultimately responsible for the actions and reputation of the global football community, whether it’s the decision for the hosting of a World Cup or a corruption scandal.”
He showed confidence in leading the organisation out of the current corruption problem.
“We, or I, cannot monitor everyone all of the time. If people want to do wrong, they will also try to hide it.”
Eventually, he resigned as the FIFA president amid the scandal and remains banned from football activities until October 2028.