Villar quits FIFA in another graft case
Print Edition
THE corruption crisis in world soccer has removed another top FIFA official.
Jailed in Spain on suspicion of financial wrongdoing as head of the Spanish football federation, Angel Maria Villar has resigned his top positions at FIFA and European governing body UEFA.
FIFA confirmed yesterday that Villar resigned as its senior vice president. That followed UEFA’s announcement he had left its executive committee after 25 years. He was suspended as Spanish federation president on Tuesday amid a criminal investigation into allegations of corruption.
Villar exits international soccer in disgrace after rising to the No. 2 elected position at FIFA, as the senior ranking of eight vice presidents behind President Gianni Infantino.
Despite Infantino’s claim last year of the crisis ending for scandal-hit FIFA, two colleagues on the ruling Council have quit within three months under a cloud of suspicion. “FIFA is back on track. So I can officially inform you here, the crisis is over,” Infantino told FIFA member federations in May 2016 in Mexico City at his first congress since replacing Sepp Blatter.
However, Villar follows Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, who resigned in April. The Kuwait royal left FIFA three days after he was identified in a federal court case in Brooklyn as the source of bribes paid to Asian soccer officials. He denies wrongdoing.
Villar left the week after he was arrested in his native Spain, one of four football officials detained on charges of improper management, misappropriation of funds, corruption and falsifying documents.
Villar’s influence had weakened since American and Swiss federal investigations of FIFA-linked corruption were revealed in 2015. Once seen as a potential UEFA presidential candidate, he could not gather support to launch a bid for the European soccer leadership one year ago.
Still, the arrest of a one-time international player turned lawyer, and former chairman of FIFA’s legal and referee committees, is another blow to the battered image of international soccer bodies. Villar was arrested in Madrid along with his son Gorka Villar, also a lawyer and former director general of South American soccer body CONMEBOL, and two other senior Spanish federation officials.
Spain’s government suspended the 67-year-old Villar from the national federation presidency for one year on Tuesday and an interim replacement was appointed on Wednesday.
In a statement yesterday, UEFA said Villar had offered his resignation a day earlier “as vice president of UEFA and member of the UEFA Executive Committee with immediate effect”.
Villar was elected to the executive panel in 1992, and was UEFA’s top official for nearly a year in 2015-16 while then-president Michael Platini was suspended from duty by FIFA.
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