Former president of the Costa Rican Football Association, Eduardo Li has been banned for life by FIFA.
Li has been banned from all football-related activities following an investigation by FIFA’s Ethics Committee. The decision by the ethics committee to ban Li was triggered by Li’s guilty plea to racketeering in the United States as part of the Justice Department’s massive investigation into fraud across world football. Li was found guilty of many violations of FIFA’s Code of Ethics.
Li was been being watched and monitored since May 2015 before pleading guilty in October 2016 to one count of racketeering conspiracy, one count of wire fraud and one count of wire fraud conspiracy, relating to bribes received from sports marketing companies.
The Ethics Committee stated on Friday morning that the proceedings have come to a close and Li has been handed the lifetime ban from the game at both national and international levels of competition.
His violations stem from 13 (general rules of conduct), 15 (loyalty), 18 (duty of disclosure, cooperation and reporting), 19 (conflicts of interest) and 21 (bribery and corruption) on the Code of Ethics.
Li had been the head of FEDEFUTBOL from 2007 until his arrest in Zurich in May of 2015 by Swiss police acting on a warrant from the United States. Li is the first of seven FIFA-related officials to be arrested as part of the corruption scandal.
