The disgraced former Fifa executive Chuck Blazer has been handed a life ban from all football-related activity by Fifa’s ethics committee for bribery and other corruption.
In a statement, Fifa’s ethics panel said Blazer had “committed many and various acts of misconduct continuously and repeatedly during his time as an official in different high-ranking and influential positions at Fifa and Concacaf.
“In his positions as a football official, he was a key player in schemes involving the offer, acceptance, payment and receipt of undisclosed and illegal payments, bribes and kickbacks as well as other money-making schemes.”
Blazer, 70, pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including bribery, money laundering and tax evasion, in 2013. The charges carried a maximum concurrent imprisonment term of 75 years, but Blazer agreed to become an informant for the FBI and US justice department in return for immunity from prosecution.
The plea bargain, which was made public last month, revealed that Blazer, who was general secretary of the Concacaf governing body, began providing information to the authorities in December 2011 – more than three years before the US government charged 14 current and former Fifa officials with “hijacking” international football to run “a World Cup of fraud”.
Blazer, who was a Fifa executive committee member from 1997 to 2013, secretly pleaded guilty in November 2013, agreeing to “provide truthful, complete and accurate information” to prosecutors and to “participate in undercover activities pursuant to the specific instructions of law enforcement agents”.
Fifa said Blazer’s life ban is “effective from 9 July 2015, the date on which the present decision was notified”.
