Joao Havelange, former president of football’s world governing body Fifa, and Ricardo Teixeira, ex-president of the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol, the Brazilian football association, have been named as the figures at the centre of the ISL bribery scandal. Teixeira is Havelange’s former son-in-law.
Fifa’s former marketing partner collapsed in 2001, an episode that sparked a criminal investigation and exposed the practice of it buying influence from leading sports officials in return for lucrative World Cup television and sponsorship rights during the 1990s.
Fifa yesterday published a Swiss court dossier detailing that Teixeira received at least CHF12.74 million – now equivalent to €10.61 million or $12.16 million – in payments from the ISL agency in the period spanning 1992-97.
The document stated that Havelange received a payment of CHF1.5 million in 1997. It added that payments “attributed” to Havelange and Teixeira came to almost CHF22 million between 1992 and 2000. The Swiss prosecutors report said the influential Brazilian sports officials were investigated for “embezzlement, or alternatively disloyal management.”
The document had been barred from publication since June 2010, shortly after a settlement was reached between prosecutors, Fifa, Havelange and Teixeira to close the criminal investigation into the scandal. Fifa’s release of the document came just hours after Switzerland’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Havelange and Teixeira to prevent its publication.
Fifa said in a statement: “Fifa is pleased that the ISL non-prosecution order can now be made public, following the decision announced today by the Swiss Federal Court to allow the publication of the document by the Prosecutor of Zug. This decision by the Federal Court is in line with what Fifa and the Fifa president [Sepp Blatter] have been advocating since 2011, when world football’s governing body announced its commitment to the publication of the ISL non-prosecution order.”
In December, Havelange resigned from the International Olympic Committee just days before he was due to face an ethics commission hearing over his role in the ISL case. The 96-year-old, who remains Fifa’s honorary president, has been treated in hospital this year for septic arthritis.
In March, Jose Maria Marin was installed as the new president of the CBF and Brazil’s 2014 Fifa World Cup organising committee after Teixeira stepped down from both roles. Teixeira had been expected to serve in the positions until 2015, but took a leave of absence due to medical reasons and later elected to leave permanently, citing health reasons.