CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dominguez, right, and FIFA president Gianni Infantino attend the CONMEBOL Congress in Quito, Ecuador, last month.Dolores Ochoa/The Associated Press
The soccer federation most affected by the global corruption scandal that upended the sport more than a decade ago is under scrutiny again, just weeks before the World Cup.
Alejandro Dominguez, the leader of CONMEBOL, the South American soccer organization at the center of the sprawling FIFA scandal in 2015, is facing an ethics complaint that he received millions of dollars from the funds that had been recovered from that case. The complaint was made by a whistleblower who claims to have direct knowledge of the payments.
Senior FIFA officials have been aware of the complaint against Dominguez to its ethics committee for more than a year, according to three people with direct knowledge of the complaint who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Dominguez, one of the biggest power brokers in the sport, also serves as one of the eight vice-presidents of FIFA. The complaint accuses him, along with another senior CONMEBOL official, of receiving more than US$5-million from the money recovered by the soccer federation after it secured the return of millions of dollars lost to corruption schemes.
CONMEBOL, one of soccer’s six continental governing bodies, declined to comment, saying only that it was unaware of an ethics complaint. FIFA did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Dominguez did not reply to a request for comment.
The revelation of the complaint comes at a particularly sensitive time not only for Dominguez but also for FIFA, with the World Cup scheduled to begin next month.
Dominguez took the helm of CONMEBOL, which represents 10 South American FIFA member nations, in 2016 after his predecessor was indicted and jailed as a result of the 2015 investigation.
Soccer fans worldwide were stunned after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice uncovered more than US$150-million in bribes and kickbacks spanning two decades between soccer officials from two soccer federations — CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, the governing body for North and Central American soccer — and sports marketing executives. Investigators said officials rigged World Cup bids and awarded broadcast and marketing contracts in exchange for bribes that were paid through convoluted financial deals or sometimes with briefcases full of cash.
The status of the complaint against Dominguez is not known. But there has been increased secrecy around FIFA’s complaints and investigations since Gianni Infantino took over as president in 2016.