Back to the Philadelphia Union Newsfeed

Secret payments to soccer officials cloaked by car names

NEW YORK (AP) - Payments to the head of Peruvian soccer were masked under the name "Fiat." Money for Paraguay's boss was listed as "Honda."

Excel spreadsheets detailed the cloak-and-dagger recording system of money given to "Benz," ''VW," ''Toyota," ''Kia," and "Peugeot," among others, including a pair of payments labeled "Q2022" that appeared to be related to the FIFA executive committee's 2010 vote giving Qatar rights to host the 2022 World Cup.

"We basically decided to make up fantasy names for each of the people involved," sports marketing executive Santiago Pena testified Monday as the trial of three high-ranking soccer executives entered its second week in federal court in Brooklyn.