BUENOS AIRES\/NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) – Argentina’s football association (AFA) on Wednesday said it \u2060was “completely untrue” that its president Claudio Tapia or treasurer Pablo Toviggino had \u200cbeen ordered to give evidence by U.S. courts.<\/p>\n
The AFA acknowledged, however, that a third party was summoned to appear before a U.S. grand jury and potentially provide evidence about several people, including officials from the \u200borganization.<\/p>\n
Local media had reported that FBI agents detained \u2060Tapia and Toviggino at New York’s \u2060JFK Airport on Monday morning before they boarded a charter flight carrying the Argentina \u2060squad \u200cafter the World Cup final, and requested Tapia’s devices.<\/p>\n
Media outlet Infobae reported U.S. authorities are investigating more than $300 million in AFA-linked commercial contracts, amid wider \u2060scrutiny of Argentine football finances following December raids in a \u200bmoney-laundering probe.<\/p>\n
According to a \u200cwitness at the airport, as the Argentine team prepared to board its \u2060flight, federal agents \u200bquestioned both Tapia and Tovigginofor about 30 minutes aboard a bus parked on the tarmac.<\/p>\n
The Port Authority, a transportation agency of New York and New Jersey, referred Reuters to the FBI. \u2060The FBI declined to comment.<\/p>\n
The association did not \u200bname the third party summoned by U.S. courts, but stressed that U.S. authorities had not targeted either Tapia or Toviggino.<\/p>\n
“It is absolutely false to claim that Claudio Tapia or Pablo \u2060Toviggino have been summoned to testify by the United States justice system. It is also false to claim that their cell phones or any other electronic devices have been seized,” the association said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“The document in question does not impose \u200bany personal measure on the President of the AFA or \u2060its Treasurer, does not order their appearance, does not impose any procedural obligation on \u200bthem, and does not record any seizure or confiscation \u200cof property belonging to them,” the statement \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Lucila Sigal in Buenos Aires and Maria Tsvetkova in New York, Writing by Natalia Siniawski, Editing by Daina Beth Solomon and Toby Davis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUENOS AIRES\/NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) – Argentina’s football association (AFA) on Wednesday said it \u2060was “completely untrue”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,13201,596,85,21418],"class_list":["post-817350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}