The U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn has asked a federal judge to dismiss the convictions of Hernan Lopez and the Argentine sports-marketing company Full Play Group, saying the Justice Department will not continue to devote resources to pursuing their cases.
Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney, had previously filed a motion in December invoking "the interests of justice" in seeking to drop his office's prosecutions of Lopez, a former chief executive of Fox International Channels, and Full Play. That motion came about five months after a federal appeals court reinstated convictions that were handed down in March 2023.
U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen pushed back, saying in response that she was not "content with a mere conclusory statement" and asked the government to provide a more detailed explanation for why the convictions should be vacated. On Thursday night, Nocella supplied additional written reasoning to the court.
In the letter to the judge, Nocella wrote that "the Department of Justice has determined that it will not commit further resources to these two defendants' convictions." He added that the Department's view of the "interests of justice" rests on its discretionary authority to decide whether to pursue a prosecution in a given case. Nocella also told the court that judges possess "extremely limited" discretion to review the government's decisions to discontinue prosecutions.
Attorneys for Lopez had not immediately replied to requests for comment, and a lawyer for Full Play declined to comment. Both Lopez and Full Play have denied any wrongdoing.
The cases of Lopez and Full Play are part of a broader, long-running investigation into corruption in the sport. At least 33 other defendants have either pleaded guilty or been convicted in the sweeping probe, which was first disclosed in 2015. That initial investigation reached into the sport's international governing body, FIFA. Nocella stated that dismissing the convictions of Lopez and Full Play would not affect the status of the other defendants in the wider investigation.
The Justice Department has altered its enforcement priorities during President Donald Trump's second term, placing reduced emphasis on white-collar crime and increasing focus on areas such as drug trafficking, immigration and violent crime. Prosecutors in the underlying case had accused Lopez of arranging to pay bribes to soccer officials in order to secure lucrative broadcasting rights, including for South America's Copa Libertadores and for World Cup qualifying matches.
The court will now consider the government's renewed submission and the limits of judicial review in prosecutorial-decline decisions as it decides whether to accept the requested dismissals.