Former Guatemala judge and football federation secretary general Héctor Trujillo, who is being charged by the United States with accepting and laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, Héctor Trujillo was released on a 4 million Dollars bond after being held in solitary confinement at a detention center in New York for the past week. According to The New York Times, Trujillo’s friends and relatives will be putting up cash and real estate properties as security for the bond, and Mr. Trujillo must wear an electronic monitor and remain within 50 miles of the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.
Arrested on December 4 when the Disney cruise ship he was on with his family docked in Port Canaveral, Florida, spent the last month winding his way through federal holding facilities, according to his lawyer, Florian Miedel. After his arrest by customs agents, Trujillo, 62, spent three weeks in the custody of United States marshals at a central transfer facility in Oklahoma.
After arriving in New York last week, authorities placed him in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for his protection because of his judicial position, Miedel said. “It’s hindered his ability to communicate with family and get access to medical care,” Mr. Miedel said, presenting a 4 million Dollarsbail package to which prosecutors had agreed. The bond was to be guaranteed by 650,000 Dollars in cash and three properties — the Newark one, owned by Mr. Trujillo’s cousin and at which he plans to live under house arrest, along with two properties in Florida and California. . Trujillo has served as the secretary general of Guatemala’s soccer federation and a judge on Guatemala’s Constitutional Court. He is one of 41 defendants in the United States’ criminal case against FIFA.
This story first appeared in the blog, The Sport Intern. The editor is Karl-Heinz Huba of Lorsch, Germany. He can be reached at ISMG@aol.com. The article is reprinted here with permission of Huba.