South America’s soccer federation at heart of FIFA scandal somehow has diplomatic immunity

LIMA, Peru – How on Earth did the South American soccer federation at the heart of the FIFA corruption scandal get diplomatic immunity? The government of Paraguay made it so.

A law passed in 1997 by Paraguay means that the organization — known by its cumbersome acronym CONMEBOL, and headquartered in the country’s capital Asuncion — has effectively been beyond the law there ever since.

So CONMEBOL is protected from the kind of investigations and raids that have taken down some of FIFA’s senior management over the last week — and prompted its controversial president, Sepp Blatter, to step down.

Hugo Rubin, an opposition lawmaker in Paraguay, believes the organization chose his country as its base because it was the only nation in the region offering that level of legal protection.

Isolated and with relatively poor transport connections, Paraguay is not an obvious choice to be the home of any international organization, Rubin has argued. He is now pushing another law through the Paraguayan congress that would strip CONMEBOL of its diplomatic status.

That bill has already sailed through the lower house and will probably pass the senate with little opposition. President Horacio Cartes has indicated he will sign it when it lands on his desk.

Rubin said that what CONMEBOL was really after was not immunity but “impunity,” presumably for its allegedly crooked use of soccer money, including funds for grassroots soccer projects for poor youngsters.

Arlene Tickner, an expert in international relations at Colombia’s University of the Andes, also questioned CONMEBOL’s legal status in Paraguay.

“It’s highly unusual. Diplomatic immunity is intended for very specific individuals and institutions. As a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization, CONMEBOL is clearly not one of them,” she told GlobalPost.

No surprise, perhaps, that the US Justice Department has implicated CONMEBOL in a massive bribery scandal involving the TV rights for the Copa America, South America’s top soccer competition.

With the organization stripped of its diplomatic protections, that may leave Paraguayan police and prosecutors feeling the heat to launch their own investigation.

More from GlobalPost: It’s not just the World Cup: FIFA’s other corruption scandal adds up to $100 million

Meanwhile, Nicolas Leoz, the aging Paraguayan who once headed CONMEBOL for 27 years, remains under house arrest, with the United States requesting his extradition.

Whether he ever faces the music in American courts could now revolve around any lingering shielding from CONMEBOL’s unlikely — and now doomed — legal status in his home country.