The judicial dispute between the president of Conmebol, Paraguayan Alejandro Domínguez, and former goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert now has a new front with the complaint filed by the latter against his compatriot for alleged money laundering, among other things.
Both were already involved in a previous lawsuit for defamation, initiated by Domínguez in mid-2020, now in the pre-trial stage.
This was followed last week by the former Paraguayan goalkeeper's complaint filed with the Paraguayan Prosecutor's Office for criminal association, tax evasion, money laundering, and breach of trust.
In this regard, Chilavert's lawyer, Pedro Wilson Marinoni, told Efe on Monday that one of these charges is related to the corruption scandal that in 2015 involved several leaders of world football, including Juan Ángel Napout, former president of the Paraguayan Football Association (APF) and the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol).
Napout was arrested in Zurich in 2015 when he was the head of Conmebol, from where he was taken to the United States, where in 2018 he was sentenced to nine years in prison for organized fraud and electronic crimes.
"There is a $1.5 million check that, according to Napout's statement to US justice, Mr. Domínguez received. We have witnesses who saw that check, and they are facts and circumstances related to those events," Marinoni said.
The lawyer referred to that incident in 2014 when Domínguez was vice president of the APF and Napout was president, and added that the money went to several South American football officials who were prosecuted or convicted by US Justice.
Marinoni explained that Chilavert accuses Domínguez of an alleged irregular recovery, already in his capacity as head of Conmebol, of $16 million from the family of Nicolás Leoz, who chaired the South American football organization between 1986 and 2013.
Leoz died at the age of 90 in August 2019 while under house arrest in Asunción while his extradition to the United States, where he was also accused in the same scheme known as the "FIFAgate," was being processed.
Marinoni stated that Domínguez himself boasted of a "private recovery" of that sum of money, which according to the lawyer should have been done through the Justice system, while also asserting that they have information that it was "much more money."
"There are many questions that he (Domínguez) has to answer to Justice, and we have witnesses who will also testify about that," said the lawyer, explaining that the next step is the opening of a fiscal file.
DOMÍNGUEZ'S DEFENSE
For his part, the advisor to the Conmebol president, Claudio Lovera, told Efe that "there is no behavior that can correspond to any of the criminal charges" invoked by the former captain of the Paraguayan national team.
He indicated that, based on what he could gather from the media, it is not a "serious filing," at least in terms of the charge of tax evasion.
For this criminal charge in Paraguay, "it requires the tax authority to issue a firm pronouncement, and that does not exist," Lovera added.
"Domínguez is regularly filing his tax returns, fulfilling all his obligations, and there is no pronouncement from the tax authority regarding any individual or corporate irregularity," Lovera stated.
He said that, lacking formal access to the content of the complaint, it "sounds very similar" to what Chilavert offered as evidence in the case in which he is accused of defamation in a private criminal action process.
"I think they are trying to generate this criminal complaint in order to try to use it as an argument to prevent the oral trial, the new date of which must be set, from taking place," said Domínguez's lawyer.
He recalled that in that case, it is about a series of statements by Chilavert, made in 2019 through the media and social networks, in which he accuses Domínguez of corruption "without foundation and with the sole purpose of damaging his honor and reputation."
He also emphasized that the investigations carried out in the United States were undertaken based on a "deep forensic audit" ordered by Domínguez after taking office in 2016. EFE