After hearing seven weeks of often-impenetrable testimony about television contracts, codes of ethics and the interpretation of Spanish phrases in emails sent more than a dozen years ago, a federal jury in Brooklyn on Thursday convicted a former Fox employee and an Argentine sports marketing firm of paying bribes in exchange for lucrative soccer broadcasting contracts.
Prosecutors said that Hernán López, who until 2016 worked for a unit of what was then known as 21st Century Fox, had taken part in a complex scheme to make millions of dollars in secret annual payments to the presidents of national soccer federations in order to secure the rights to the Copa Libertadores and the Copa Sudamericana, widely viewed South American soccer tournaments.