‘Panama Papers’ leak prompts raid of European football’s headquarters

Police in Switzerland raided the headquarters of football’s European governing body UEFA to gather evidence about a Champions League contract it signed with a sports marketing company that has since been implicated in the FIFA bribery scandal.

The warrant to search UEFA, one of six regional affiliates of FIFA, and another unidentified company on Wednesday follows the publication of a 2006 contract contained in a giant cache of files leaked from a Panama law firm. The contract shows that sports marketer Cross Trading bought the rights to broadcast three seasons of the Champions League from UEFA’s marketing agency, TEAM, before charging the TV company, Ecuador’s Teleamazonas, three times the amount it paid. 

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Cross Trading was owned at the time by Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, Argentine nationals who are among 40 people charged by the US Department of Justice in a sweeping investigation of alleged football corruption. 

Prosecutors say football officials and business executives paid more than US$200 million in bribes for media and marketing rights to tournaments, votes on which counties host the World Cup and elections at FIFA, the sport’s governing body.

The Justice Department inquiry has focused mostly on football-related business in the Americas and not on UEFA in Europe, professional football’s most lucrative market.

The Swiss prosecutor’s office said the raids were motivated by the suspicion of criminal mismanagement and misappropriation “and are at present directed against persons unknown, meaning that for the time being, no specific individual is being targeted by these proceedings”.