A former banker who once led an Argentine sport-marketing firm testified Wednesday he conspired with two former 21st Century Fox executives to pay as much as $32 million in bribes to South American soccer bosses for lucrative tournament broadcasting rights.
(Bloomberg) — A former banker who once led an Argentine sport-marketing firm testified Wednesday he conspired with two former 21st Century Fox executives to pay as much as $32 million in bribes to South American soccer bosses for lucrative tournament broadcasting rights.
Alejandro Burzaco, who once worked for Citigroup Inc. in New York, is the government’s star witness against Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez, the two former Fox sports executives on trial for engaging in wire-fraud and money-laundering conspiracies. US prosecutors say the duo paid bribes to promote Fox’s interests in securing the rights to soccer matches, including the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.
“I was their partner and I was their co-conspirator in paying bribes to get broadcast rights,” Burzaco told a federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, as he pointed to both men sitting at the defense table.
Burzaco said Lopez and Martinez also “committed” to paying at least $50 million to $60 million more before the scheme came to a crashing halt in May 2015, when authorities raided a five-star hotel in Switzerland and arrested soccer bosses. Burzaco, who was one of those sought by the US government, pleaded guilty and is cooperating with authorities in the hopes of getting a lenient sentence.
Burzaco testified he started working with Lopez and Martinez in 2011, when Fox International Channels took over the South American sports network that had been partnering with Burzaco’s Torneos to broadcast soccer matches.
Lawyers for both men told jurors in opening statements that Burzaco was a liar who had implicated their clients out of “revenge.”
Burzaco testified as a key witness at a 2017 trial of soccer bosses tied to the sprawling international scandal around the sprawling international crackdown on FIFA, soccer’s governing body. At least 27 individuals have pleaded guilty while two former soccer officials were convicted at the 2017 trial. Four companies have also pleaded guilty.
Fox has not been accused of any wrongdoing
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