Another scandal hits FIFA

Police in Rio de Janeiro confirmed that a FIFA high level staff is complicit in the case and have also arrested 11 suspected ticket touts as part of an investigation called Operation Jules Rimet, which tapped the mobile phones of the suspects.Fabio Barucke, the police investigator in charge of the case, said a FIFA official […]

Police in Rio de Janeiro confirmed that a FIFA high level staff is complicit in the case and have also arrested 11 suspected ticket touts as part of an investigation called Operation Jules Rimet, which tapped the mobile phones of the suspects.
Fabio Barucke, the police investigator in charge of the case, said a FIFA official who was a source of the tickets had access to FIFA offices, stadiums and match tickets and added that some tickets have been re-sold for eight times their face value.
Investigators are planning to meet FIFA and its official ticket agency, Match, which sells World Cup hospitality packages.
The football’s body Head of Media, Delia Fischer said it had not received any information from the police identifying the person.
“Maybe it’s not from us, it’s often easy to come to a conclusion about who is FIFA,” she said.
Barucke also said the ticketing ring aimed to make up to $100m, around £60m, by illegally re-selling tickets and that the group had operated at previous World Cups.
The suspected ringleader has been named as Mohamadou Lamine Fofana, an Algerian who was previously staying at the Copacabana Palace hotel, where all the FIFA top executives are staying.
The police investigator believes Fofana was the middleman and that the ticket source was “someone higher up” the chain.
“He [Fofana] has tickets from hospitality, from Match, and he was close friends with someone from FIFA who was in the middle of that negotiation, who was helping out with that negotiation.
“We were able to identify there is the participation of someone from FIFA.” He concluded.