Report: CONMEBOL cannot pay prize money for Copa America winners
South America's governing body, CONMEBOL, does not have sufficient funds to cover the $10 million prize money for this year's Copa America winners, this according to a report published in Uruguay.
According to Uruguay's La Ovacion, CONMEBOL reportedly finds itself in a difficult and compromising dilemma given the corruption scandal that revolves around FIFA. The reports alleges CONMEBOL cannot pay the $10 million that it will owe to the top four placing teams. The South American champion is owed $4 million this year, while the second, third and fourth place teams are owed $3 million, $2 million and $1 million, respectively.
The financial and corporate institutions from where the prize money was to come from, are reportedly under investigation by the FBI and the United States Department of General Prosecution. As a result, those funds have been blocked starting this summer.
"With all that as happened with the CONMEBOL, there is not enough for one book; there is enough for 20 books! It is frightening." Wilmer Valdez, President of the Uruguayan Football Association and Vice President of CONMEBOL was quoted on La Ovacion.
The move comes amid a major bribery scandal and investigation into the operations of FIFA, the international governing body for soccer. One of 14 soccer officials indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice was Nicolas Leoz, a Paraguayan and former FIFA executive committee member. He was also a former long-time president of CONMEBOL.
Earlier this month, Paraguay's Senate voted Thursday to repeal a law giving immunity to the headquarters of South America's soccer confederation, the latest fallout from a sweeping U.S. investigation into an alleged bribery scheme in FIFA.
The Senate's unanimous decision sent the bill on CONMEBOL's immunity to President Horacio Cartes, who has said he supports it. The measure was approved last week by the House of Deputies. ''I approve repealing the immunity because, as I said many years ago in this same chamber, CONMEBOL and FIFA are a mafia,'' said Sen. Juan Carlos Galaverna from the governing Colorado Party.
Leoz lobbied Paraguay's legislators in 1997 for the law making the headquarters exempt from legal intervention. The immunity includes protection from the kinds of raids that happened in May at FIFA and CONCACAF headquarters in Switzerland and Miami.
Leoz, president of CONMEBOL between 1986 and 2013, once bragged that only the Vatican enjoyed the same kind of ''immunity and total privileges'' that the organization's headquarters enjoyed. ''The police can't come in, nor can an investigating judge, nobody as long as this law is in force,'' Leoz told Argentine sports newspaper Ole in 2012. Leoz is currently under house arrest. Through his lawyer, he has said he is innocent and will fight extradition to the U.S.
Information from The Associated Press contributed to this report.
