Washington, Dec 3 (EFE).– U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Thursday that 16 more FIFA officials had been indicted for racketeering conspiracy and corruption, deepening the crisis affecting soccer’s world governing body.

In a 92-count indictment that was unsealed Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn and which supersedes an earlier 47-count indictment in May, 16 more current or former FIFA officials were charged with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies for their alleged participation in a 24-year bribes-for-contracts scheme, the Justice Department said in a news release.

“Not content to hijack the world’s most popular sport for decades of ill-gotten gains, these defendants, as alleged, sought to institutionalize their corruption to ensure that it lived on, not for the good of the game but for their own personal aggrandizement and gain,” Lynch said.

“The message from this announcement should be clear to every culpable individual who remains in the shadows, hoping to evade our investigation: You will not wait us out. You will not escape our focus,” she added.

The newly indicted defendants include Honduran Alfredo Hawit, the president of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, or Concacaf; and Paraguayan Juan Angel Napout, the president of the South American Football Confederation, or Conmebol, both of whom were arrested Thursday in Zurich at the request of the United States.

Also among the new defendants charged were the former president of Honduras and of that nation’s soccer federation, Rafael Callejas; the current president of the Brazilian soccer federation, or CBF, Marco Polo del Nero, who resigned from FIFA’s Executive Committee last week; and his predecessor as CBF chief, Ricardo Teixeira.

Other newly identified defendants included the president of the Ecuadorian soccer federation, Luis Chiriboga, as well Argentines Eduardo Deluca, a former Conmebol general secretary, and Jose Luis Mieszner, who currently holds that post.

Panamanian Ariel Alvarado, former president of Panama’s soccer federation, also was named as a defendant by the U.S. Justice Department, Lynch said.

“In the original indictment, we alleged that between 1991 and the present, two generations of soccer officials conspired to solicit and receive well over $200 million, often through an alliance with sports marketing executives who sought to obtain lucrative contracts and shut out competitors through the systematic payment of bribes and kickbacks,” Lynch said.

“The new charges highlight corruption schemes principally involving soccer officials in Central and South America and sports-marketing companies based in South America and the United States. Consistent with the intergenerational nature of the corruption schemes, they involve payments relating to (media and marketing rights to) tournaments that have already been played, as well as matches scheduled into the next decade.”

In justifying U.S. extradition requests for FIFA officials, Lynch said the defendants carried out their alleged scheme in part in the United States and that money was laundered through Wall Street banks.

In addition to the expansion in the number of defendants, the U.S. Justice Department said the superseding indictment also included additional charges for seven defendants named in the original indictment in May.

The previous FBI raid in Switzerland resulted in the arrest of Eduardo Li, the former president of the Football Federation of Costa Rica (FEDEFUTBOL); he is still in custody awaiting trial. Since then, Costa Rica moved to elect a new FEDEFUTBOL president.

The agency also said that eight defendants had pleaded guilty and agreed to forfeit a combined total of more than $40 million in ill-begotten gains, including Jeffrey Webb, a former FIFA vice president and erstwhile Concacaf president.

Also Thursday, FBI agents raided the offices of Miami-based Media World, whose parent company is a unit of Spanish media production group Imagina, EFE confirmed.

Sources close to the investigation told EFE that the agents entered the office and copied the hard drives of some of the company’s computers.

Some employees also confirmed that the agents had occupied the third floor of one of Media World’s buildings and had barred access to the company’s workers.

Media World is a unit of Miami-based Imagina US Inc., which describes itself as an “audiovisual one-stop-shop, covering all clients’ production, postproduction, technical and commercial needs.”

The Justice Department said in its news release that the raid at Media World was part of the FIFA corruption investigation. EFE