An English director of FIFA's
hospitality partners MATCH has been arrested in Brazil as part of an
investigation into illegal ticket sales.
Ray
Whelan, who used to work as an agent for Sir Bobby Charlton, was
arrested at the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro, the hotel reserved
for FIFA's senior executives.
The
arrest came as part of Operation Jules Rimet, Brazil police's
investigation into ticket touting which has seen detectives tap phones,
make a total of 12 arrests and seize a number of tickets.
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Arrested in Rio: Raymond Whelan (right of left
picture), the CEO of Match Hospitality, a subsidiary company of FIFA in
charge of World Cup ticket packages, arrives at a Rio police station
after he was arrested accused of leading a network that illegally sold
game passes
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Englishman Whelan, a former agent of Sir Bobby Charlton, was arrested at Copacabana Palace hotel in Rio
A spokesman for the Rio
de Janeiro State Security Secretariat confirmed Whelan was in custody
and would spend the night in a Rio police station.
A spokesman for Match Hospitality didn't immediately reply to requests for comment.
Police
are investigating the illegal resale of World Cup tickets on the black
market and arrested 11 people and seized 131 game tickets last week - at
least 70 of them for corporate hospitality.
Police
said then that an Algerian man arrested as the suspected leader of the
scalping ring had connections to FIFA or Match and the original source
of the tickets to be sold illegally at hugely inflated prices was
'someone higher up.'
Match Hospitality is the main provider
of hospitality packages for the World Cup and paid $240million for the
exclusive rights to sell corporate hospitality at the 2010 and 2014
World Cups.
Blatter's nephew, Philippe Blatter, is the president of a company which is a shareholder in Match Hospitality.
Re-selling
World Cup tickets for profit is illegal in Brazil and against FIFA
rules. Police said they had information from 50,000 phone calls they
tapped during their scalping investigation.
Of
the more than 3 million purchasable tickets for the tournament, 445,500
were allocated to Match Hospitality, according to FIFA.
Any unsold or unused corporate hospitality tickets should be returned to FIFA to be made available to the public.
Police
estimated last week that the scalping ring was making 1 million
Brazilian reals ($455,000) per game by re-selling tickets on the black
market.
They were hoping to get $16,000 per ticket for the July 13 final in Rio, they said.
The
Algerian suspected to be the ringleader of the scalpers, Mohamadou
Lamine Fofana, runs a company that is one of Match Hospitality's
customers.
Match said
Monday that Fofana's Atlanta Sportif Management and three other
companies, two of them official Match Hospitality agents, had their
remaining World Cup ticket allocations blocked or canceled after some of
their tickets ended up in the hands of scalpers.
Police said that Fofana was only the middle man and appeared to have access to restricted areas at the Copacabana Palace Hotel.
Earlier,
MATCH Hospitality announced it had blocked sales to four companies
after tickets were seized from touts by Brazilian police.
The
four companies are Atlanta Sportif, whose chief executive was one of
those arrested in Rio de Janeiro, Reliance Industries Ltd, Jet Set
Sports and Pamodzi.
Jet Set is based in New Jersey, Reliance is one of India's biggest companies, and Padmodzi is based in Nigeria.
A
statement from MATCH read: 'Following... the arrest of Lamine Fofana,
CEO of Atlanta Sportif, engaging in illegal resales, MATCH Hospitality
has cancelled all hospitality packages purchased by Atlanta Sportif for
the remaining matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
'Pending
further investigations, MATCH Hospitality will block the packages of
Reliance Industries Ltd, Jet Set Sports and Pamodzi.
'The
customers and agents mentioned above are to co-operate with MATCH
Hospitality by helping the authorities with their enquiries regarding
the hospitality packages with their names on them found in Mr Fofana's
possession, failing which, MATCH Hospitality will cancel their tickets
for the semi-final and the final too.'
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The Copacabana Palace Hotel, the hotel reserved for FIFA's senior executives
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