(ATR) FIFA has banned Jeffrey Webb for life and opened a corruption investigation into the salaries and bonuses scheme run by Sepp Blatter and two ex-officials.
The adjudicatory chamber of the Ethics Committee banned the former CONCACAF chief and FIFA vice-president following an investigation opened in May 2015.
It found him guilty of bribery and corruption along with several ethics breaches including duty of disclosure, cooperation and reporting and conflicts of interest.
Webb was arrested on the eve of the FIFA Congress in May 2015 as part of a wide-ranging investigation into a decades-long corruption and bribery scandal that brought world football’s governing body to its lowest ebb. In November, Webb pleaded guilty at the U.S. District Court in New York to one count of racketeering conspiracy, three counts of wire fraud conspiracy and three counts of money laundering conspiracy.
Disgraced former FIFA president Blatter faces further punishment after being handed a six-year ban from football earlier this year over the "disloyal" $2 million payment to Michel Platini he approved.
After appealing a six-year ban for the "disloyal" payment in August, Blatter is now under investigation for a scheme involving former FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke and FIFA’s ex-finance chief Markus Kattner that enriched the trio to the tune of $80 million over five years.
They face sanctions relating to bribery and corruption, conflicts of interest, offering and accepting gifts and other benefits and breaching rules of conduct among other ethics violations.
In June, an internal investigation by FIFA attorneys provided evidence of a "coordinated effort" to enrich themselves through annual salary increases, World Cup bonuses and other incentives. Swiss authorities raided FIFA headquarters in Zurich and turned over the salary contracts of the former officials to investigators.
Blatter, Valcke and Kattner worked in tandem to amend their contracts on a regular basis, extending the length of the contracts, providing each other with substantial bonuses and safeguarding their salaries from termination. They approved and signed the changes to their contracts prior to the creation of FIFA’s compensation sub-committee in 2013.
Written by Mark Bisson
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