Mysterious Fifa bag man pops up in court, confirming corruption suspects’ worst fears
And the worst part? He’s not even a soccer fan
Manhattan/Newark — When US authorities shocked the soccer world by making corruption arrests in Switzerland in May 2015, a key bag man disappeared. His whereabouts remained a dark mystery for the next 2 1/2 years, sparking rumours and fears that he was secretly helping prosecutors. On Wednesday, Eladio Rodriguez surfaced as a prosecution witness in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, to testify against three former South American soccer officials on trial for taking bribes. Rodriguez told jurors how he arranged tens of millions of dollars in bribes from his former Argentine sports marketing firm, Torneos Y Competencias, to the defendants and others in exchange for broadcast rights to tournaments. He offered jurors an insider’s account of a scheme that ran for more than two decades, as his company and two other sports-marketing firms teamed up to use offshore accounts to route secret payments to the men on trial and others at Fifa, international soccer’s governing body. Rodriguez, 7...
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