Former Fifa vice-president Juan Angel Napout sentenced to nine years in US prison
Napout was convicted in December of wire fraud and racketeering conspiracy by a federal jury after a seven-week trial
To his lawyers, he was a man who did hundreds of good deeds, including paying for his chauffeur’s knee surgery. But US prosecutors said former South American soccer boss Juan Angel Napout sometimes moved illicit cash by dispatching his personal driver on 15-hour trips from Buenos Aires to Asuncion, Paraguay.
Napout, 60, a Paraguayan who was president of CONMEBOL, the governing body for South America’s soccer, as well as a vice-president of Fifa, international soccer’s governing association, was sentenced to nine years in prison on Wednesday after a jury convicted him of getting US$3.4 million in bribes and soliciting almost US$25 million.
In announcing the sentence Wednesday in New York federal court, US District Judge Pamela Chen said she had a hard time reconciling the portrait of Napout painted by his lawyers, family and friends, as a man of generosity and good character with the evidence she had seen at trial.
“Napout had a public face, one that is reflected in all the letters I’ve seen,” Chen said. “But then there was this hidden character he had, this hidden life.”
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 20 years behind bars, while Napout pleaded for a reduced sentence.
