Ariel Alvarado, former president of the Panamanian Football Federation (FPF) between 2000 and 2010, fHe was sentenced this Tuesday to 12 years in prisonafter a jury convicted him of acts of corruption during his time in charge of the entity.
As reported by the Public Ministry of Panama, Alvarado accepted bribes in exchange for granting broadcast rights to the matches of the Panamanian team for the Concacaf qualifying qualifiers for the 2010 South Africa and Brazil 2014 World Cups.
The ex-official was pointed out in the end on charges of corruption in the private sector and money laundering, harming the federation itself.
The report stated that Alvarado received three payments in total totaling $230,000. as bribes by the trading company Traffic USA.
Instead, Alvarado granted broadcasting rights to Traffic Sports, a Miami-based company that promotes soccer events in Central America, the United States, and the Caribbean.
Although the case originated in 2017 when reports revealed irregularities in television contracts, the investigations began in 2015 when the US justice system revealed a large pyramid scheme that involved more than 20 leaders and was called “FIFA Gate”. .
Under these inquiries the FIFA Ethics Committee discovered that Alvarado was also involved in the FIFA Gate, for which he was imposed a sanction of more than $600,000 dollars and the suspension of all links related to football.
For this act, he was arrested in 2017 but later released, in a situation that the Panamanian prosecutor’s office appealed to force his arrest but which was denied days later.
Under the administration of Alvarado in the FPF, the Panamanian team achieved a runner-up in the 2005 Gold Cup when they faced each other in the United States and after 120 minutes of regular time and overtime they fell 3-1 from penalty kicks.
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