Ex-President of Honduras pleads guilty in FIFA scandal

‘‘Guilty’’, stated Rafael Callejas on March 28 before the judge in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Rafael Callejas, the former president of the Honduran soccer federation (FENAFUTH) from 2002 to 2015, pled guilty to charges of racketeering and wire fraud in the United States’ corruption case against the International Federation for Association Football (FIFA). Callejas, who was also president of Honduras from 1990 to 1994, admitted to at least two of the five accusations for which he was indicted on December 3 of last year.   The United States’ Justice Department accused Callejas of soliciting and accepting bribes of ‘‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’’ from a company based in Florida named Media World in 2015. He allegedly received at least $1.6 million between March 2011 and January 2012 in exchange for granting this company the transmission and marketing rights of the Honduras national soccer team’s qualifying matches for the 2014, 2018, and 2022 World Cup tournaments in Brazil, Russia and Qatar, respectively.

His case is part of a broader investigation currently being carried out by the United States Attorney’s Office into thirty other FIFA officials in the region for alleged corruption charges. With Callejas’ case, there are fourteen defendants that have plead guilty throughout this investigation.

Callejas agreed to pay $650,000 to the United States as part of his guilty plea, of which $180,000 is to be paid within a week and the rest within twelve months, as reported by the New York Times. Callejas, who also rose suspicions of corruption after his term as president of Honduras, now faces a maximum sentence of twenty years for each additional charge in the FIFA case. He will remain under house arrest in the United States until the final trial, scheduled for August 5th, 2016.