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A sports marketing company whose owners have been charged with bribing top football officials tried to negotiate a sale to an entity associated with Paris Saint-Germain team president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, a witness testified on Tuesday in federal court. Santiago Pena, a former executive of the Argentina-based Full Play Group, testified that he spent a lengthy period of time on secret negotiations called the "New York project," given the name because the deal for 51 percent of Full Play was valued at $212 million -- 212 is a New York City telephone area code. Pena said the talks with Al-Khelaifi and the sovereign wealth fund Qatar Sports Investments ended on May 27, 2015, when U.S. prosecutors unsealed indictments against Full Play's controlling principals, the father and son Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, for racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. They were charged for payments to officials in the Americas allegedly made for broadcast and marketing contracts. Al-Khelaifi and Qatar Sports would have had the right to buy an additional 19 percent at a later date, Pena said. Al-Khelaifi is a criminal suspect in Switzerland for bribery linked to Qatar-owned BeIN Sports' broadcast agreements with FIFA for 2026 and 2030 World Cup rights in the Middle East and North Africa. He met on Oct. 25 with Swiss prosecutors in Bern. Pena said that only he, Hugo and Mariano Jinkis and Full Play accountant Sergio Rabinovich were aware of the negotiations. Pena testified that after the indictments were made public, he deleted emails discussing the potential sale. "I did it in order to protect the company,'' he said. Hugo and Mariano Jinkis have not been extradited to the U.S., and Pena said they remain in Argentina. Pena reached an agreement this year with U.S. prosecutors to testify in exchange for not being charged. "I always considered myself a completely small fish in this issue,'' he said. Juan Angel Napout, the ex-president of Paraguay's football federation; Jose Maria Marin, the former president of Brazil's federation; and Manuel Burga, the ex-head of Peru's federation, are on trial in federal court in Brooklyn for racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. Pena, who worked for Full Play from 2009-15, testified about a ledger he kept of payments that the Jinkises directed be made to top soccer officials. He said he knew only of what they told him were amounts owed to officials. Pena said Napout was to be paid in cash, not by wire transfer, so he had no knowledge if any money was received. "I simply wrote down the commitments based on other negotiations,'' Pena said. Pena completed testimony Tuesday and was followed by the stand by James Haggerty of Bank of America, who explained wire-transfer records, and Daniel Huntley of Hilton Worldwide Holdings, who detailed Napout's reservation records.
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