Argentina's soccer boss, Claudio Tapia, clashed with Argentine President Javier Milei over corruption accusations and a political push to ban the soccer director from attending this year's World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
The latest scandal occurred on Tuesday, when an Argentine lawmaker filed a complaint against Tapia for allegedly selling complimentary World Cup tickets, which each country association can use only for invitations and not for revenue, for a reported USD 850.
Tapia was recently allowed to leave Argentina amid an ongoing investigation over alleged improper withholding of contributions, with his bond set at 30 million pesos (some USD 20,000).
He will be out of the country from May 27 to July 21, during which he will attend "sporting and institutional commitments," including the UEFA Champions League final (played last Saturday) and the World Cup in North America.
A report by La Nacion noted that even if Argentine justice left Tapia off the hook for travel, there are still active investigations in the countries the Argentine director will be traveling to.
The report mentions that three federal prosecutors from the Justice Department are investigating the operations of the Argentine Soccer Association (AFA for its Spanish acronym) in the United States.
La Nacion's analyst Hugo Alconada Mon pointed out that similar cases of corruption in sports, such as FIFAgate, ended with the culprits being arrested while attending public events.
Jeffrey Webb, who was president of CONCACAF in May 2015, attended a FIFA congress in Zurich and ended up in cuffs as the face of the FIFAgate. Former CONMEBOL (South America's main soccer organization) president, Juan Ángel Napout, was arrested in that operation.
Two Washington prosecutors, Patrick Gushue and Christopher Ting, and one Florida prosecutor, Michael Berger, will be investigating TourProdEnter LLC, the company of theater producer Javier Faroni, which, according to La Nacion, became the AFA's fundraising agency abroad.
The company handled an alleged $300 million in AFA's funds and moved them from an American bank to shell companies, with the case coming to light after a $13 million transfer to PNC Bank, a new banking entity in the fund management scheme.
Milei clashes with Tapia over corruption scandals
Milei has been very critical of Tapia's role in several corruption scandals, saying back in March that "with everything they do, they get more and more corrupt.”
Both have also clashed in the past over proposals by the Milei administration to privatize the soccer business, which is now owned by social clubs.
During another argument involving alleged benefits to certain soccer clubs in the Argentine first division, Tapia warned that "three presidents have come and gone in the nine years I’ve been in office, and I have many more years to go."
“Fights are fought from the inside, not the outside. We all know there’s a lot to improve,” Tapia said during a May speech given after he received an award for his leadership.