Brazil police say Fifa official connected to $100m ticket scam

Police on Thursday have said a Fifa official is involved in a $100m ticket scandal. During an investigation that earlier this week led to the arrest of a ring of 11 suspected ticket touts, police said they had identified the first name of the alleged Fifa official from telephone calls. Some tickets have been re-sold for eight times their face value. Fabio Barucke, the police investigator in charge of the case, said a Fifa official who was a source of the tickets had access to Fifa offices and stadiums and match tickets.

He [Fofana] has tickets from hospitality and he was close friends with someone from Fifa. We were able to identify there is the participation of someone from Fifa.

Police investigator Fabio Barucke

The suspected ringleader has been named as Mohamadou Lamine Fofana, an Algerian man who was previously staying at the Copacabana Palace hotel, where all the Fifa top executives are staying. A spokeswoman for Fifa said the organisation has yet to receive any information from police identifying the person and declined to comment further.

Maybe it’s not from Fifa. It’s often easy to come to a conclusion about who is Fifa.

Fifa spokeswoman Delia Fischer

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