Former FIFA official is released from US prison and deported
New York –
Juan Angel Napout, the former president of the South American football board, will be released from a federal prison and deported after serving five and a half years of his sentence.
Napout was convicted of one count of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud conspiracy on December 22, 2017, and was taken into custody that day. He was sentenced to nine years in prison and is being held in a low-security federal prison in Miami.
His conviction was upheld in 2020 by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and his release was scheduled for August 9, 2025.
Breon Peace, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Pamela K. Chen on Thursday that the 65-year-old is eligible for release to a residential repatriation center on July 6.
Peace wrote that Napout may be detained by immigration and customs enforcement and ICE “expects to take Mr. Napout into custody upon his release … with the aim of deporting him from the country.”
“ICE has indicated that it can also facilitate immediate self-removal, which would mean working with Mr Napout and his counsel to get a flight out of the country and working with the Paraguayan consulate to arrange a. to prepare an emergency passport.”
Napout was banned for life by FIFA in 2019. He served as president of the South American governing body CONMEBOL from August 2014 to December 2015, president of the Paraguayan Football Federation from 2007-14, and member of the executive committee of FIFA. He was arrested in Zurich in December 2015 while attending FIFA meetings.
