Red Card

by Ken Bensinger

  When the two men returned to Full Play’s offices, Mariano Jinkis said he wanted to meet with them privately. Hawilla knew right away what the topic would be. Sure enough, Jinkis and Burzaco told him that they had paid large bribes to a dozen South American officials, including the entire Group of Six, to secure the Copa América, and had pledged to keep paying them for each successive edition of the tournament. So far the tally was $40 million, Jinkis said, and as an equal partner in Datisa, Traffic owed a third of that. He also would be expected, Jinkis reminded him, to withdraw the lawsuit he filed against Full Play and CONMEBOL as soon as possible.

  Hawilla felt sickened. He had foolishly hoped this deal was different. But he put up no resistance; he had a flight back to Brazil in an hour, and felt desperate to escape the conversation. Mariano Jinkis followed him on the way out, explaining that Hawilla would never have to make the bribe payments directly. He preferred, he insisted, to handle them himself.

  “You can be calm,” Jinkis said, smiling broadly. “Because I already took care of everything.”

  * * *

  Hawilla had come to Miami at the outset of May for a brief visit mainly to close on a property he was purchasing on Fisher Island. Studded with luxury condos arrayed around one of America’s highest-rated golf courses, Fisher Island’s zip code was the wealthiest in the whole country.

  For $6.5 million, half of it cash, Hawilla was buying a 4,400-square-foot, three-bedroom unit on the island’s Atlantic-facing side, just above a man-made beach that featured fine white sand imported from the Bahamas. The unexpected interruption from the FBI had come on a Friday, and Hawilla was set to meet his lawyer for the formal closing on the condo the following Tuesday. He’d be back in Brazil in less than a week.

  Over the weekend, however, it was hard for him not to dwell on what had happened. How much did the FBI know? Where was this young agent getting so much information about old business affairs? It was puzzling. And then, on Monday Hawilla’s phone rang. It was, of all people, Chuck Blazer.

  Speaking Spanish, Blazer shocked Hawilla, saying that FBI agents had come to his apartment that very morning asking probing questions about his Cayman Islands bank account and about “two companies, one from Uruguay, another from Panama.” Did Hawilla have any idea, he wondered, what was going on and how much the FBI knew?

  “Please, I’m asking you as a friend to . . . to . . . to . . . leave us out of this because of the investigation,” Hawilla replied, becoming upset.

  “They went to visit me, too,” he continued. “Two people from the FBI, they also visited me.”

  “You?” Blazer asked, a seeming note of surprise in his husky baritone.

  Hawilla explained that the agents had asked repeatedly about transfers of money to Blazer from accounts in Uruguay and Panama, and that he’d replied that he didn’t know anything.

  “They asked me if there were payments outside the contract,” the Brazilian continued. “I don’t know. The truth is I don’t know. I only ask that you not mention us because otherwise it will involve us in a . . . a . . . a . . . a very serious problem, you know?”

  * * *

  Blazer had started covertly recording phone calls with Hawilla nearly a year earlier.

  After telling Norris and the rest of the team about Traffic’s decades of bribery, he had combed through his old archives in search of documentary evidence.

  He recalled receiving six-figure payments related to the Gold Cup contracts he’d signed with Hawilla’s companies, and eventually found a handful of documents from 1999 and 2000 showing wires to his bank account in the Cayman Islands. The wires—for $200,000, $100,000, and $99,985—came from accounts for companies based in Uruguay and Panama.

  The firms, Tansy S.A., and Metrobank S.A., didn’t have any obvious connection to Traffic, but Blazer clarified that was because Hawilla was careful and almost always used intermediaries to make wires on his behalf so the payments to the officials wouldn’t be on his books. There were, in fact, a host of shell companies that Hawilla’s trusted bagmen used to make payments.

  Digging further, Blazer also found the phony contract he and Hawilla had created to explain the $600,000 wire he’d received in 2003, as well as the emails he’d sent to the Brazilian about the money at the time.

  The prosecutors were increasingly convinced that Hawilla, if they could get him to flip, would be an incredible asset to the case. Snaring someone who for decades had been the one paying the bribes could blow the case wide open. A man like Hawilla could prove just as valuable—if not more so—than a Jack Warner.

  Hawilla was the one paying the bribes. That meant he could lead them to who knows how many corrupt officials, and provide the paperwork to prove it.

  Blazer, based on memory and the documents he’d dug up, had provided a strong lead, but it wasn’t quite enough. They needed to prove that Hawilla had knowledge of the payments despite the fact that his fingerprints weren’t directly on them. Wires from Traffic to Tansy or Metrobank at roughly the same time those shell companies sent money to Blazer, and for the same amount of money, for example, would definitely help close the loop.

  The easy solution, Berryman suggested, was to subpoena Delta National Bank & Trust Co. in Miami, which he’d identified through correspondent bank transfers as one of Traffic’s two main U.S. banks and the one it appeared to use for bribe payments. If any bribes had originated from Delta, the IRS agent reasoned, they would pop up immediately.

  But Norris refused. Delta wasn’t some giant like Wells Fargo or Chase; it was a tiny private bank with just three branches in the whole world. It had been doing business with Traffic for so long it was possible, if not likely, that its bankers would tip off Hawilla or some other Traffic employee about the subpoena. The risk was just too great.

  Instead they decided to make Blazer pick up the phone. Unlike a lot of cooperators, he seemed to have no compunctions about making covert recordings. In fact, at times Blazer seemed to relish it. If he could trick Hawilla into admitting he’d made the payments, that could be enough.

  Blazer first called early the previous June, trying to get Hawilla to send him documents showing he’d made the bribes. But Hawilla didn’t quite remember the exact payment, and denied having any of the paperwork, so Blazer tried to guide him to discuss the older ones, from Panama and Uruguay. Hawilla resisted, explaining that “we’re not directly involved, because we do this with other companies, you see?”

  Blazer called again at the end of June 2012, and this time got both Hawilla and his elder son, Stefano, who spoke English, on the line. He managed to get Stefano to admit to knowing about Tansy, the Uruguayan company used to funnel bribes, but it still seemed thin, and so the prosecutors came up with the idea of recording Hawilla at the London Olympics. That, too, had come up empty.

  Proof of intent aside, Hawilla presented another major obstacle. Brazil did not extradite its citizens. Even if the prosecutors built a perfect case, they couldn’t touch Hawilla so long as he was at home.

  So they dreamed up a new plan. Hawilla, they knew, came to Miami from time to time to check in on Traffic’s local office. If they sat back and waited, perhaps they could make an approach the next time he came into the country and catch him lying, or telling others to lie, then collar him and lean on him hard to cooperate.

  Lying to a federal agent was a crime in and of itself, and attempting to get others to lie or intentionally fail to cooperate was clear-cut obstruction of justice. The trick was for an agent to come in looking innocent and just get the person talking; soon enough they’d dig their own ditch. It was straight out of the FBI playbook. Approach someone you already have dirt on and try to catch them in a lie.

  When the opportunity finally arose in early May, the prosecutors sent Randall in the role of the young and ingenuous agent on a fishing expedition. They were banking on the fact that Hawilla wasn’t an American and was probably even more unprepared than most to deal with an FBI agent asking questions. The smart thing to do in that
situation was to say nothing and get a lawyer. Happily for the investigators, Hawilla did no such thing.

  * * *

  After his first encounter with Hawilla in the lobby, Randall returned to the Mandarin Oriental on May 9, this time accompanied by Berryman. He asked the front desk clerk to call Hawilla’s room and tell him to come down. The FBI agent had sworn out a criminal complaint for obstruction of justice the previous day in Brooklyn, then come back to Miami to make the arrest.

  Hawilla’s flight back to São Paulo was scheduled for later that day, and he and his wife had packed their bags the night before. Now, instead of the airport, the sixty-nine-year-old was marched back up to his hotel room by the two agents, instructed to get dressed, and then escorted to the local FBI field office.

  Handcuffed to the wall in a bleak interview room, he was given a stark choice. He could, as was his legal right, insist on a court appearance to make an initial plea. It was already fairly late on Thursday, so he likely wouldn’t get before a magistrate until the next day, in which case Hawilla would have to trade his street clothes for a prison jumpsuit and spend the night with hardened criminals in the Miami Federal Detention Center.

  Then he’d be transferred to Brooklyn, where the complaint had been filed, and he’d fly “Con Air,” the government’s prisoner transport system, to get there, which meant a crazy itinerary around the country in a series of rickety old planes stuffed with scary inmates rather than a direct flight. Once in New York, he’d face potentially more time in jail before even the possibility of bail arose. To top it off, the whole thing would be public, and he’d face the humiliation of people finding out he’d been arrested. It could even make the news in Brazil.

  Alternatively, Hawilla could waive his right to an appearance and agree to cooperate with the ongoing investigation of international soccer corruption. In that case, the agents explained to him, he’d fly commercial to New York that same day, be put up in a nice hotel, and not have to spend a single second in jail. Everything would be hush-hush, a big secret, and nobody would have to know.

  Hawilla had been wealthy for a long time. He flew first-class when he wasn’t on a private jet, ate at Michelin-starred restaurants, and stayed in $1,000-a-night hotels. He socialized with famous athletes and powerful businessmen. He spoke little English and was almost completely unfamiliar with the U.S. system of justice. But he’d seen enough movies to have strong opinions of American jails, overflowing with vicious gang members who preyed on the weak.

  Fighting the charge would certainly mean some time behind bars, at least until he made bail, and Hawilla wanted no part of that, not even for a minute. If cooperating meant getting out of the handcuffs and avoiding jail, then it really didn’t feel like much of a choice at all. Hawilla signed the waiver and agreed to help. He would discover the true ramifications of that decision later.

  * * *

  After the feds had taken her husband away from her, warning her not to tell anyone about what had happened, the first person Eliani Hawilla thought to call was Aaron Davidson. So far from home, Eliani had no idea who else to turn to. Davidson, the president of Traffic Sports USA, was the obvious choice. He was American, spoke Portuguese, and lived in a condo just across Brickell Key, a five-minute walk from the hotel. Most importantly, she was sure he would be discreet, ensuring the arrest didn’t end up in the gossip pages back home. Over the phone, near hysterical, she told Davidson that his boss had just been arrested and needed help.

  A forty-two-year-old lawyer who grew up in Dallas, Davidson had been at Traffic for a decade. He’d first met Hawilla when working as an attorney for Hicks, Muse, the Texas-based private equity fund that briefly took a stake in the Brazilian firm in the late 1990s. In 2003, when Davidson was promoting a regional golf tour in Mexico, Hawilla recruited him to come to Miami and work for Traffic.

  Over time, Hawilla came to rely on Davidson to be his eyes and ears in the U.S. Davidson, meanwhile, grew deeply loyal to his boss; he looked up to him and considered him both a visionary marketing genius and a warm and encouraging father figure.

  Davidson raced to Eliani’s side. He stayed with her until, hours later, Hawilla was finally permitted by the agents to call his wife and explain what was going on. Then Davidson drove to the Miami airport with a bag full of Hawilla’s medication, handing it off to Randall and Berryman curbside.

  That evening, Davidson went out to eat with Eliani and Enrique Sanz. Over dinner, it was hard to talk about anything but the arrest. The news was shocking for everyone. Eliani was petrified, anguished for her spouse of thirty-six years, and didn’t want to be alone. Davidson and Sanz, meanwhile, couldn’t help but be worried. They’d been deeply wrapped up in Traffic’s dirty doings for years.

  None of them knew why Hawilla had been arrested, and the federal agents certainly hadn’t been willing to share any information about the case.

  What exactly were the feds looking into?

  TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND

  HAWILLA BEGAN TO PROFFER THE morning after he was arrested. He initially stayed at the Plaza Athénée, a fancy hotel on New York’s Upper East Side. But as it became clear the case would drag on for some time, he relocated to an apartment a friend loaned him in a building on 64th and Park, directly upstairs from Daniel, an elaborate Michelin three-star restaurant where the Brazilian frequently dined.

  Despite the considerable comforts of his lifestyle. Hawilla was constantly reminded of his newfound status as a presumptive criminal. For starters, he hated New York, where by his standards, too few people spoke Spanish or Portuguese. He was subject to a nighttime curfew and location monitoring, and obliged to wear an ankle bracelet with a built-in GPS location monitor. Anytime he wanted to go anywhere outside of a carefully circumscribed orbit, he had to call Jared Randall to get permission.

  Right up front Norris had quizzed Hawilla extensively about his assets, and finally settled on a bond of $20 million, guaranteed by $5 million in cash, the deed to his brand-new condo on Fisher Island, and title to all of Hawilla’s U.S. assets, including Traffic Sports USA, his Gold Cup and World Cup qualifier contracts, his stake in the North American Soccer League, and all his U.S. bank accounts. Hawilla also, of course, had to surrender his passport.

  Because of his work in soccer, Hawilla had traveled frequently for decades, but he was also very much a homebody. Other than the two years he spent in Boca Raton in the early 1990s, he had never lived outside Brazil, and he rarely left home for more than a week or two at a time. His family was in Brazil, as were his friends. Homesickness quickly began to define his life.

  The matter came to an uncomfortable head when Hawilla brought up his wife’s birthday.

  Eliani was turning sixty on June 3, 2013, and Hawilla had planned an elaborate party for her in São Paulo. Between friends, family, and colleagues, the couple were expecting as many as 150 people to show up. Then on June 11, Hawilla was turning seventy, and he felt certain his three children were planning a surprise party in honor of the milestone.

  Missing those events, he told the prosecutors, would “termine minha vida”—end my life. Not only that, he said, but it would raise suspicions back home. He was a public figure. People would notice his absence; they might even write about it in the sports or gossip pages. And that, he pleaded, could be bad for the case.

  Norris was unswayed. The answer was no. Brazil didn’t extradite its citizens, and the risk that Hawilla would never return was far too great. But Norris didn’t say that. Instead, he gingerly hinted that a return to Brazil could eventually be a reward for being helpful and truthful to the investigation.

  For the time being, the prosecutor suggested, Hawilla could throw Eliani’s party in Miami and invite people to come up. Alternatively, he could send his wife back to Brazil for the party along with his regrets, or simply cancel the whole thing. But for now, there was no way he was going home.

  But Hawilla was right about one thing: his extended absence
did raise some issues. What he needed was a good cover story. The prosecutors suggested that he could tell people he was in the U.S. on business, trying to sell Traffic; the due diligence process would give him a plausible excuse for requesting so much paperwork. Another idea was for Hawilla to tell people he was meeting with architects and supervising a major remodel of his new condo on Fisher Island.

  A third option, suggested by Hector, was blaming some kind of physical ailment. Hawilla considered blaming prostate cancer, but São Paulo was crawling with top-notch doctors so the story seemed flimsy. He could blame ear issues, perhaps, or heart problems. Finally, the prosecutors settled on Hawilla telling people he was suffering panic attacks that prevented him from flying and was seeking treatment, but until then couldn’t travel. It was thin, and some folks in Brazil seemed suspicious, but it would have to do.

  The whole distasteful situation was a source of continual frustration for Hawilla. He was a man accustomed to enormous comforts and even greater liberties, an admired and powerful public figure, and now everything about his daily existence reminded him how all that had been taken away.

  Stuck in New York, Hawilla had little social life to speak of other than dining at expensive restaurants with his wife. All his phone calls, his interactions with Traffic employees in Brazil and Miami, were wrapped in lies and deception. As he began to undertake covert operations for the prosecution, wearing a wire, he found himself spending increasing amounts of time with Jared Randall. As the only Spanish speaker on the soccer case, Randall was delighted to be able to put his language skills to use while watching over Hawilla.