Switzerland's 10-day quarantine rule delays hearing of Brazil's Ricardo Teixeira appeal against life ban imposed by FIFA

Lausanne: An appeal hearing for former FIFA official Ricardo Teixeira to challenge his life ban for bribery was delayed because his lawyers face a 10-day quarantine in Switzerland if they arrived from Brazil.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport said it was unclear when the hearing scheduled for Monday could go ahead.

Teixeira’s legal team wants to present his case in person, though the former 2014 World Cup organising committee leader was not expected to attend. He faces arrest in Switzerland nearly five years after being indicted on financial conspiracy charges by the US Department of Justice. Teixeira has evaded extradition to the United States.

File image of Ricardo Teixeira. AFP

Arrivals in Switzerland from around 50 countries, including Brazil, are currently required to quarantine.

The death toll from COVID-19 in Brazil of more than 114,000 people is second only to the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University.

FIFA’s ethics committee banned Teixeira for life last November and fined him 1 million Swiss francs ($1.1 million). It relied on American authorities’ evidence of bribe taking worth millions of dollars linked to commercial contracts for South American soccer competitions from 2006-12.

His lawyers argued at FIFA that “Teixeira vehemently denies all charges, which are no more than assumptions made by US attorneys, without any evidence to support the indictment.”

Teixeira was to be the first test at CAS of a FIFA life ban arising from the sprawling and ongoing American investigation.

Now 73, Teixeira resigned in 2012 from FIFA’s executive committee — and organising the 2014 tournament in Brazil — to avoid sanctions in a World Cup kickback scandal dating back more than a decade. That case involved the late Joao Havelange, the FIFA president from 1974-98 and formerly Teixeira’s father-in-law.