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FIFA bans jailed soccer official Napout for life for bribery

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 1:06 p.m. ET

ZURICH (AP) — FIFA has banned former soccer official Juan Ángel Napout for life, almost 21 months after he was convicted on racketeering and corruption charges in a Brooklyn court.

FIFA says its ethics committee judges found Napout guilty of bribery between 2012 and 2015, and fined him 1 million Swiss francs ($1.01 million). It is unclear how FIFA can enforce payment.

Napout was a FIFA vice president, and leader of South American soccer body CONMEBOL, when he was arrested in Zurich in December 2015.

The U.S. Justice Department had requested a second wave of arrests at a luxury hotel in FIFA's home city in a sweeping investigation of soccer corruption.

Napout, from Paraguay, was found guilty of taking bribes worth millions of dollars linked to commercial contracts for South American soccer competitions.

He was sentenced to nine years in prison in August 2018, nine months after a trial that lasted several weeks.