January 25 – Former South American powerbrokers Jose Maria Marin and Juan Angel Napout, both awaiting sentence in the United States having been found guilty in the FIFAGate corruption trials, are still fighting their corner demanding to be acquitted or face a retrial.
Marin is scheduled to be sentenced on April 4, Napout five days later, with both reportedly likely to receive significant jail sentences.
Marin was president of the Brazilian FA during the country’s hosting of the World Cup in 2014 while Napout was a former head of both the Paraguayan federation and CONMEBOL. Marin was found guilty of six of the seven counts against him of money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy. Napout was found guilty of three charges.
But the defendants’ attorneys still claim there was not enough concrete evidence to convict them.
“The evidence presented by the government at the trial was insufficient to justify conviction,” Marin’s lawyers said in a statement.
They argue that the prosecutor’s office “has never proved that Marin participated, or agreed to participate in” a media rights bribery scheme in relation to South America’s Copa America and Copa Libertadores as well as the Copa Brasil.
Napout’s lawyers are also seeking the acquittal of their client because they say the prosecution failed to provide sufficient evidence, for example, of the damage that alleged bribes would have caused FIFA or Conmebol.
Napout’s defense calls for a retrial because, it alleges, the government’s top witness, Argentine marketing supremo Alejandro Burzaco, at one point lied to the jury.
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