NEW YORK: A criminal case against two former 21st Century Fox executives and a sports marketing company accused of bribing South American soccer officials to obtain lucrative broadcasting rights will reveal “a culture of corruption,” a prosecutor told a jury in a Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday.
The former Fox executives, Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez, and Buenos Aires-based Full Play Group SA have pleaded not guilty to crimes including wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy.
The charges are part of a long-running corruption probe surrounding FIFA, the world governing body for soccer. “This case is about the corruption of international soccer,” prosecutor Victor Zapana told jurors in opening statements, saying the alleged scheme funneled money that could have gone toward building stadiums and developing youth and women’s leagues into the pockets of corrupt officials.
Zapana said the next several weeks of trial would show how the defendants joined a “culture of corruption” and aimed to cover their tracks using secret ledgers and coded messages.