“I’ve decided to speak now after everything with FIFA, CONMEBOL, CONCACAF has exploded and it was time for me to tell my story and try to free myself from this burden I’ve been carrying for so long. I’ve decided to do it now because I don’t think the journalist (Andrew Jennings) who first published the story in an English newspaper in 2008 had any firm evidence, he just had suspicions. I wasn’t keen to speak out because I was really scared. But now, behind there is the Swiss Public Prosecutor, the US Public Prosecutor, and now I’ve decided to do it because of that and speak about what I knew and what happened in that institution,” ‘Confidant X’ said during a meeting with this newspaper, on any given day, in any place.
He is in Spain with his family. He left Asunción “scared and worried”. “When I asked to stop doing the work that they had entrusted to me, when I wanted to leave the bribe money, the problems began. They watched me, cars without license plates followed me, the phone rang at dawn. I could feel the pressure and decided to leave with my family. I have a wife and children,” said X, who states that “even while I have been outside of Paraguay they have shot at the walls of my house. It was horrible, because we still have loved ones there, family and friends”. He wants to protect his identity because “Dr. Leoz is very old, but there are others who have been close to him that are dangerous”.
‘Confidant X’ is a middle-aged man who is neither tall nor short. He speaks with certainty and has the account numbers, dates and times maintained in his head.
“There were hard ones, like the payment of bribes to the CONMEBOL leaders,” which this newspaper will reveal tomorrow (Saturday). But, regarding that, there is no evidence beyond my testimony, because nobody signs receipts for the bribes.”
There are other papers, documents with the fortune amassed by those that worked at the apex of CONMEBOL, “which was a money-making machine, but also an orchard to take it out from”.
‘Confidant X’ arrived in Spain on the advice of a prosecutor, who is now a senator in Paraguay. “The best advice that he could give me was to leave the country. And I did that”. Here he is advised by other lawyers and, reveals that he lived under protection for a while.
“I hope that justice arrives in the end and uncovers what has been happening for so many years in CONMEBOL, a building protected like an embassy, inviolable for the police”.
“It was the safest place in Paraguay, but being inside it entailed a greater risk than those that existed by being outside it,” he said.