Switzerland's justice ministry claimed that a former Venezuela soccer federation president, Rafael Esquivel, has been extradited for his bribery charges in the United States. He was even escorted by American police officers to his flight back to New York for the widening FIFA case.
According to Yahoo! News, Swiss justice ministry claimed that two American police officers "took charge of him in Zurich and accompanied him on the flight back to New York" on Monday. The reason that he was detained in Zurich by Swiss authorities is because he was arrested at a Zurich hotel last May 2015. Just last month, the ex- Venezuela soccer federation president finally decided to be extradited.
Esquivel was under arrest in Zurich in May, as a part of a U.S. probe into an alleged corruption among senior officials in the world football and FIFA, which is considered as the football's chief governing body. A spokesman for the Swiss Federal Office of Justice mentioned that it was informed by Esquivel that he finally withdrawn his last appeal against extradition, which was pending before Switzerland's highest court, as claimed by ESPN FC.
"This enabled the Federal Office of Justice to approve his extradition to the U.S.A. the same day," Folco Galli told The Associated Press. "Esquivel must be placed in the custody of a U.S. police escort and taken to the U.S.A. within 10 days," he added.
The United States authorities also recently charged another individual in the probe of corruption in soccer and its world governing body FIFA. A federal judge in New York unveiled some papers that expressed that a defendant named Miguel Trujillo was charged with a felony on March 4. The felony case is related to the publicly recognized soccer-corruption cases, as reported by Reuters.
Moreover, American prosecutors accused the former Venezuela FIFA president Esquivel of taking bribes worth millions of dollars connected to the Copa American tournaments, which included one tournament hosted by Venezuela. A U.S. indictment noted that Esquivel owned a few of residential properties in Florida.
Meanwhile, Esquivel is set to appear in federal court in Brooklyn, New York within 24 hours. Two other soccer officials still remain detained in Switzerland involved in the FIFA case.
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