A Florida merchant pleads guilty to charges of racketeering in a plot to bribe top soccer officials in exchange for marketing rights, media rights to tournaments, and international soccer matches.
Aaron Davidson pleaded guilty on Thursday in a federal court in Brooklyn. He could be sentenced to decades in prison on April 24th. As part of the agreement reached with the prosecution, he agreed to pay a fine of over half a million dollars.
Davidson, 45, was arrested last year during the FIFA investigation, after prosecutors said soccer officials accepted $150 million in bribes over 24 years in exchange for granting marketing rights for competitions. Davidson ran a marketing firm based in Miami. He was arrested along with over a dozen others.
The prosecution says that Davidson agreed to pay bribes totaling over $14 million.