Payments to Manuel Burga, former president of the Peruvian Football Federation, were hidden under the name "Fiat". The money for the president of the Paraguayan Football Association was noted as "Honda".
Excel spreadsheets detail the hidden payment system for "Benz," "VW," "Toyota," "Kia," and "Peugeot," among others, including a couple of payments registered as "Q2022" that seem to be related to the 2010 FIFA executive committee vote that awarded Qatar the rights to host the 2022 World Cup.
"We basically decided to invent names for each of the people involved," said sports marketing executive Santiago Peña in his testimony on Monday, at the start of the second week of the trial of three prominent South American officials in a federal court in Brooklyn.
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Peña worked for Full Play Group, a company based in Argentina that won the advertising rights for South American teams in the World Cup, Copa America, and Copa Libertadores.
Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, father and son who ran Full Play, were charged along with many other high-ranking football officials in 2015 by the US attorney's office. Father and son have not been extradited until now.
Peña testified that he copied the accounting book from Full Play's office onto a flash drive along with a stack of documents shortly after the initial charges were made public in May 2015 and hid the evidence at his house for two years before turning it over to US prosecutors.
Juan Ángel Napout, the former president of the Paraguayan Football Association; José María Marín, the former president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF); and Manuel Burga, the former president of the Peruvian federation, are on trial for conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and money laundering.
Rafael Esquivel, the former president of the Venezuelan Football Federation, was dubbed "Benz" and his accounting book included a payment of $750,000 for "Q2022". He pleaded guilty in November 2016 to conspiracy to commit racketeering, three counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and three counts of conspiracy to launder money.
Source: AP