UPD Greek among FIFA arrests: Who is Costas Takkas from Cayman Soccer Federation?

A Greek or a man of Greek descent is reportedly among the fourteen top soccer FIFA officials arrested this morning in a 5-star hotel in Zurich, Switzerland. They will be extradited to the United States on charges backed by an F.B.I. investigation that allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals.

According to New York Times that first brought up the story, the U.S. Department of Justice indictment names 14 people on charges including racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. In addition to senior soccer officials, the indictment also named sports-marketing executives from the United States and South America who are accused of paying more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for media deals associated with major soccer tournaments.

“The soccer officials charged are Mr. Li, Jeffrey Webb, Eugenio Figueredo, Jack Warner, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas of Britain, Rafael Esquivel, José Maria Marin and Nicolás Leoz.

Charges were also made against the sports-marketing executives Alejandro Burzaco, Aaron Davidson, Hugo Jinkis and Mariano Jinkis. Authorities also charged José Margulies as an intermediary who facilitated illegal payments.”

In a separate section featuring each of the arrested charged with corruption , the NYT write about Costas Takkas:

 

• Costas Takkas

  Takkas, according to multiple news media reports, is a former top official in the Cayman Islands federation of which (FIFA vice president Jeffrey) Webb is president.

 

OK. Many wonder about the existence of a soccer federation on the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands with less than 57,000 citizens. The Cayman Islands are famous for being a tax heaven and home for an unknown yet certainly a quite big number of off-shore companies.

However, Greeks try to solve one more puzzle: who the hell is Takkas!

Several Greek media know to report that Costas Takkas was general secretary of the Cayman Islands federation for 15 years and that since February 2014 he has been Chief Financial & Accounting Officer at Abakan, Inc.

He is said to have worked at several companies and he is a holder of a diploma from Imperial College of Science and Technology of London.

He must be around 60 years old. No picture of him has been available neither in NYT nor in the Greek media.

Meanwhile, The Mysterious Mr Takkas has earned two lines in wikipedia saying:

Costas Takkas is a football administrator, the attaché to the Concacaf president (Jeffrey Webb), and the former CIFA general secretary.

Takkas was arrested in May 2015 in Switzerland to face corruption charges in the United States.

In hope that Abakan’s Takkas and FIFA’s Takkas were the same person and not an unfortunate synonymy, an evil coincidence should be noted: that the headquarters of Abakan are in Miami, Florida where also the headquarters of the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) are located. The FBI raided this morning the CONCACAF offices. President Jeffrey Webb was already arrested in Zurich.

Mystery solved

        Costas Takkas

Later in the evening, private Mega TV reported on its Prime Times News that Costas Takkas is a Greek-Cypriot.

 

Odd: Marios Lefkaritis speaks to Mega TV about Costas Takkas

According to The Guardian, Swiss authorities authorities will be conducting their own investigation, during which they will have a word on the QT with 10 members of the Fifa ExCo who took part in that lovely old World Cup vote back in 2010. Among them is another Greek-Cypriot, Marios Lefkaritis, now one of the UEFA vice presidents.

Marios Lefkaritis

Speaking to Greek Sport FM, Lefkaritis declared that he had no idea.

The Cayman Islands and its Soccer Federation

Interesting is also that the Cayman Islands may not have even a soccer goal post  but they do have an online newspaper The Cayman iNews. And there we read the spectacular story of the attempts to establish a football pitch with the generous assistance of FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

“On a balmy June evening in 2009, Sepp Blatter, the president of Fifa, arrived by private jet at Owen Roberts International Airport in Grand Cayman for an evening of pomp and ceremony befitting the status of a man who enjoys all the power of a world leader without any of the accountability.

Cutting the ribbon at the first ever headquarters of the Cayman Islands Football Association, the smell of fresh paint lingering in the summer air, he was hailed as the “father of our football family” by Jeffrey Webb, the association’s president, who recalled the “humble beginnings” of football in the tax haven, when he and his cohorts would work “with no phones, no fax, no physical address”.

A refreshment or three later, Blatter watched on as construction workers busied themselves in a nearby field, part of a 16-acre site earmarked as a centre of excellence where local footballers would one day train on top-grade pitches and in state-of-the-art gymnasiums. “Cayman has not yet qualified for the World Cup,” Blatter told dignitaries. “But I’m sure that one day you will make it. We can help.”

Six years on, the rumbling whirr of JCBs can still be heard at Georgetown over the clinking of champagne flutes. After a number of disastrous attempts to lay the turf on an area prone to flooding from swamp water and salt contamination, officials in the Caymans are starting from scratch, with plans to put down an artificial surface.

According to Fifa’s own records, some £1,612,794 has been funnelled into the Cayman enterprise via its Goal programme since the turn of the millennium. Not a single pitch has been created and no gyms are in sight. All this in a British overseas territory where the national football team has contested just 75 fixtures in its history, losing 49 of them and conceding 189 goals in the process. Still, there is some progress in the Caribbean. Webb, a banker to trade, is now a vice-president of Fifa.

From allegations surrounding corruption, ticket scams, cash for votes and kickbacks, there are countless more damning and disagreeable examples of the folly that has typified Sepp Blatter’s 17-year stewardship of world football’s governing body. But the Cayman episode best demonstrates the naked politicking that is sure to sweep the most reviled figure in sport back into power.” (Full story here from The Scotsman)

Sepp Blatter is not among the arrested in Zurich.