The former president of Paraguay’s soccer federation was sentenced Wednesday to 9 years behind bars — the harshest penalty yet for the soccer officials swept…
The former president of Paraguay’s soccer federation was sentenced Wednesday to 9 years behind bars — the harshest penalty yet for the soccer officials swept up in the widespread FIFA bribery scandal.
But before Brooklyn federal court judge Pamela Chen sentenced Juan Angel Napout, his own defense attorney Silvia Pinera-Vasquez had the audacity to compare her client to the recently-deceased U. S. Senator John McCain.
Pinera-Vasquez told the court Napout shared the same values as the war hero — who died four days ago after discontinuing treatment for a malignant brain tumor.
She even whipped out a copy of McCain’s 2005 book “Character is Destiny,” and treated the courtroom to an excerpt from the second paragraph of the book’s introduction, reading: “It is your character, and your character alone, that will make your life happy or unhappy.”
Pinera-Vasquez continued the patriotic pitch by noting that Napout had been reading American presidents’ biographies as he awaited sentencing at a federal detention center in Brooklyn.
But Napout’s dabbling in George Washington and Alexander Hamilton didn’t sway Chen, who icily told the defense that if the former soccer exec “loves our country so much,” he shouldn’t have violated U. S. laws.
“These crimes were not because of need, but because of greed,” Chen said, echoing a defense submission that Napout had been born into a “cradle of gold.”
“There is really no explanation,” the jurist said.
Napout, attempted to collect almost $30 million in bribes for offering exclusive media marketing rights to various sports broadcasting companies. He managed to pocked almost $4 million before his arrest in Dec. 2015.
In addition to the 9 years behind bars, Chen ordered that Napout pay a $1 million fine and almost $3.4 million in forfeiture.
Napout’s Brazilian co-defendant, Jose Maria Marin, was sentenced to 4 years in prison on similar charges earlier this month.
Guatemala’s Hector Trujillo was sentenced to 8 months in Oct. 2017, while former CONCACAF official Costas Takkas got 15 months behind bars.
