NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered reinstatement of the convictions of a former Fox executive and a South American sports media and marketing company in the FIFA bribery investigation.
Hernan Lopez, the former CEO of Fox International Channels, was convicted by a jury in March 2023 along with the marketing company Full Play Group SA of one count each of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy related to the Copa Libertadores soccer tournament.
Full Play was convicted of two additional counts each of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy related to World Cup qualifiers and friendlies and to the Copa America, the continent’s national team championship.
U.S. District Judge Pamela K. Chen, who presided over the trial in Brooklyn federal court, granted a motion for an acquittal in September 2023, citing a May 2023 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving Joseph Percoco, an aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and construction firm owner Louis Ciminelli. Chen wrote those decisions meant Lopez’s conviction could not be sustained under the honest services fraud statute. The U.S. government then appealed.
U.S. Senior Circuit Judge John M. Walker Jr. and U.S. Circuit Judges Beth Robinson and Sarah A. L. Merriam vacated Chen’s decision and ordered her to reinstate the convictions and to conduct additional proceedings consistent with their opinion.
Walker, writing for the panel, said “the nature of defendants’ conduct (bribery), coupled with the character of the relationship between the bribed officials and the organizations to whom they owed a duty of loyalty (employer-employee relationships), place the schemes presumptively within the scope of” the statute.
They added: “The foreign identity of certain organizations and officials does not remove the schemes from the ambit of” the statute, “especially where, as here, relevant conduct occurred in the United States, for the benefit of United States-based executives and organizations (e.g., Lopez and Fox), and the victims were multinational organizations with global operations and significant ties to the United States.”
The circuit judges said it was up to Chen to decide whether to grant a defense motion questioning whether the government’s evidence was sufficient to prove a conspiracy to deceive the South American governing body CONMEBOL.
“The proceedings that resulted in Hernan’s conviction were afflicted with numerous defects,” John Gleeson, a lawyer for Lopez, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Today, the Court of Appeals ruled against us on one discrete legal issue — the same issue that we believe Judge Pamela Chen ruled on correctly when she acquitted our client after trial. We intend to seek review of that issue in the Supreme Court of the United States, and have no doubt that our client will eventually be fully vindicated.”
Mayling C. Blanco and Michael Martinez, lawyers for Full Play, did not respond to emails from the AP seeking comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York had no comment.
Dozens of people have pleaded guilty or been convicted after a U.S.-led investigation into FIFA and international soccer. The probe became public in 2015 when U.S. prosecutors accused the leaders of soccer federations of tarnishing the sport for nearly a quarter-century by taking $150 million in bribes and payoffs.
“Corruption in international soccer is not new,” the circuit court wrote. “It was rampant for decades before the events at issue here.”
Fox Corp., which split from a subsidiary of international channels during a restructuring in 2019, was not charged and has denied any involvement in the bribery scandal.
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