The former president of the Panamanian Football Federation, Ariel Alvarado, already suspended for life by Fifa in the wake of the planetary scandal called “Fifagate”, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in his country for corruption, announced Tuesday the Prosecutor General.
Alvarado, 64, president of Fepafut from 2000 to 2010, was accused by the Panamanian courts of having received bribes of up to 230,000 dollars (about 214,000 euros) when marketing the rights to broadcast matches qualifying for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in Panama.
At the end of his trial, the anti-corruption court “sentenced to 144 months in prison (…) for financial crime, in the form of acts of corruption in the private sector and money laundering“, said the general prosecutor’s office in a press release.
According to the same source, the judgment was pronounced on August 28, but it had not been made public until then.
Ariel Alvarado, who is also a former member of the Executive Committee of the Confederation of North, Central America and the Caribbean (Concacaf), also received a 12-year ineligibility sentence after serving his sentence.
Since 2019, he was already banned for life from exercising any function in world football by the International Federation (Fifa), of which he was a member of a commission.
After an internal investigation, the world body sentenced him to this sentence and a fine of more than 450,000 euros for having received bribes between 2009 and 2011 in connection with matches organized by Fepafut as well as on marketing and television rights relating to Concacaf.
Many former South or Central American officials have been suspended for life by Fifa following the “fifagate“, a scandal that erupted in 2015 after a vast investigation by the American justice system, plunging the body of world football into an unprecedented crisis.