Few people in Brazil are likely to mourn the arrest in Zurich today of José Maria Marin, the dictatorship-era politician and former head of the Brazilian Football Confederation.
Swiss police detained the 83-year-old as part of their swoop on
Fifa officials allegedly involved in money laundering and bribery.
It is far from the first controversy surrounding the CBF president, who is from the same clique of Brazilian football kingpins as his predecessor Ricardo Teixeira and FIFA president João Havelange - both of whom were embroiled in corruption scandals.
Marin’s appointment in 2012 was controversial as a result of his support for the country’s military dictatorship and his alleged association with the torture and killing of a journalist, Vladimir Herzog.
Herzog’s son, Ivo has said Marin should take some responsibility for the death of his father because in 1975, when the future head of the CBF was still a state congressman, he publicly denounced Herzog and called for the authorities to take action. The journalist was arrested soon after on the orders of police chief Sérgio Fleury and died in prison tafter undergoing repeated electric shocks. A year later, an unrepentant Marin praised Fleury for fulfilling his duties “in the most praiseworthy manner.”
In 2013, the former Brazil striker Romario joined Ivo in presenting a petition to the CBF and Sepp Blatter urging Marin’s appointment be referred to the Fifa ethics committee for conduct unbecoming a football official.
Romario had previously called Marin a thief and said he should “spend 100 years in prison” for taking a medal from a Corinthians player at a junior cup match. Marin responded by filing a lawsuit, but Romario was aquitted by the Supreme Court in April this year.
Marin is a former São Paulo state governor, a post he won with the support of one of the most corrupt politicians in Brazil, Paulo Maluf who has been
found guilty of taking hundreds of millions of dollars of bribes.
