Brazil Judges Jail Hero Reporter

By Andrew Jennings

Juca Kfouri - the reporter hated by Brazil's football crooks

THE ARSE of Brazilian football’s most disgusting lowlife, José Maria Marin, has been kissed by three scummy judges in Sao Paulo. Marin is president of the Brazilian football association, the CBF.

The judges have sentenced Juca Kfouri, one of Brazil’s finest reporters, to an incredible three months in jail or a US$15,000 fine.

His crime? “Offending the honour” of the sleazy Marin, formerly a propagandist for Brazil’s last military, murdering dictatorship. Marin is a thug – but a well-connected one.

The looming shadow of Marin may be one of the reasons why Brazil’s selaco didn’t have enough heart to defeat Germany on that terrible day in Belo Horizonte last July.

Who would want to play at Maracana five days later and risk having to shake the bloodstained hand of José Maria Marin?

I told the gruesome story of Marin’s involvement in the torture and murder of brave journalist Vlado Herzog in 1975 during the dictatorship in my book Omertà: Sepp Blatter’s FIFA Organised Crime Family.

Marin hates journalists and exploded with rage when Kfouri revisited recently the Herzog story.

Juca Kfouri breaks big stories about corruption in Brazilian football. He has his own radio and TV shows, a newspaper column – and his car is armoured against assassins.

Juca exposes the institutionalised corruption in the tight little group of old men who control the Brazilian confederation.

He opened my eyes to the links between disgraced FIFA boss Joao Havelange, Rio gangster Castor Andrade and Havelange’s son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira. This latter slimebag preceded Marin at the top of the CBF and my disclosures in 2010 that Teixeira stole at least $10 million in contract kickbacks at FIFA forced him out of football.

Romario, footballer turned politician, asked me to write an article for his blog about Teixeira’s vast corruption. Two years ago this month Teixeira recruited a tame judge in Rio, Augusto Alves Moreira Junior, who fined me £3,250 for defaming the crook.

I had thought that was impossible. I cannot be bothered to appeal. I hope Teixeira comes to the UK to explain to our courts why I should pay him.

Marin (left) and Del Nero:
 We control Brazilian football and the judges are our friends

Several months later Juca revealed that Marin had authorised huge secret ‘consultancy’ payments from the CBF to the disgraced Teixeira who had emigrated to Miami.

Last month Marin authorised a US$800,000 bonus for Teixeira’s daughter Joana. She had warmed a seat at the committee organising last year’s World Cup after her Daddy had to go. The citation did not say what work she had done, other than be her father’s daughter.

In the murky world of Brazilian football officials the scum rises to the top. The sequence of mobbed-up, bribe machine Joao Havelange presiding over the game in the 1970s followed by his son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira then José Maria Marin will continue soon when the 82-year-old Marin steps aside for a younger man.

That will be 73-year-old Marco Polo Del Nero, who replaced Teixeira on FIFA’s Executive Committee.

Juca Kfouri will appeal the nasty verdict in Sao Paulo; we must not forget the names of the judges who jailed him, Richard Francis Chequini, Rodolfo Pelizzari and Marcia Helena Bosch.

I was honoured to share a platform with Juca in July 2010 at the Abraji annual conference of Brazil’s investigative reporters. We have met several times since at other Brazilian media conferences and at the Sao Paulo Literary Festival last August.

In 2011 the Brazilian National Council of Justice accused 62 judges of selling justice to the highest bidder.

Of course there are no such suspicions about the reasons for dropping ticket racketing charges in Rio earlier this month against Ray Whelan, noted fixer with the Byrom brothers, who hold the exclusive FIFA contract to supply World Cup tickets to the black market.

Nonetheless, we look forward to hearing the evidence against the 11 other men who were working with Whelan.

                * * * * * * * *

I told the story of the murder of Vlado Herzog here.

  

There’s a longer version in Chapter 16, “Marin pointed the finger of death at Vlado” in my book published in 2014 Omertà: Sepp Blatter's FIFA Organised Crime Family. That is at Transparency Books. 

And here are the crooks at the CBF crowing about their ‘victory’ over Juca Kfouri.