CONMEBOL President Juan Ángel Napout, in his first English-language interview since the FIFA scandal broke May 27, said that the South American football body "faces a financial crisis after the U.S. Department of Justice charged 14 officials with more than two decades of criminal activity, including racketeering, money laundering and tax evasion," according to Tariq Panja of BLOOMBERG. Napout: "It's a big problem. We still haven't reached the solution to all our financial problems, but in these last three weeks we've been paying health programs that had never been paid in 30 years, we paid taxes that were never paid." The Copa América, football's oldest regional competition, is at the center of the U.S. probe. Authorities there allege current and former CONMEBOL officials took more than $100M in bribes from a marketing company "in exchange for television and sponsorship rights." The future of a "special centenary tournament," slated to be held in the U.S. in '16, remains in doubt. Napout: "That's on the lawyer side. I don't want to be quoted on that. Everything is being studied by lawyers." He added that CONMEBOL, which only has $10M in cash reserves, has had to pay $2.8M in unpaid employee health costs and a further $1M in taxes over the past few weeks. Napout added that the body has not yet approached FIFA for financial assistance "although it has asked its lenders for support" (BLOOMBERG, 7/4).
'TOTAL AND ABSOLUTE CHANGE': The AP reported Napout said that CONMEBOL needs "total and absolute change" after becoming engulfed in the FIFA corruption scandal. He said that it was "carrying out audits and was willing to collaborate with the ongoing investigation by U.S. and Swiss authorities." Until now, Napout "had been silent since the scandal broke out a month ago" (AP, 7/4).
