Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have moved to drop charges against a former Fox employee who was convicted of scheming to pay millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for the lucrative broadcast rights to soccer tournaments.
It was the latest turnabout for a case that exposed corruption at the highest levels of international sports.
Hernán López, who was the chief executive of a unit that was responsible for developing Fox’s sports broadcasting business in Latin America, was convicted in 2023 of money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. Prosecutors had said Mr. López conspired to pay off the heads of national federations to win the rights to broadcast two South American soccer tournaments.
But on Tuesday, Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, wrote in a letter to the judge who oversaw the case against Mr. López and the Argentine marketing firm convicted along with him, Full Play Group, that dismissing it was in the interest of justice.
In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. López said he was “gratified” by the request to dismiss the charges, and called the case against him “baseless from the start.” Full Play declined to comment through a lawyer.
It was another dramatic swing in a case that arose from a Justice Department investigation into corruption by international soccer officials. Federal investigators began probing corruption at FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, in 2010, but the case burst into the open with a series of high-profile arrests in Switzerland in 2015.
The investigation rocked the world of global soccer. Mr. López and Full Play were indicted five years later and convicted in March 2023 after a seven-week trial.
Prosecutors said that Mr. López took part in a scheme to make secret payments worth millions of dollars to secure the broadcast rights to the Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana tournaments. Full Play, according to prosecutors, engaged in a scheme to pay bribes to soccer officials for rights to multiple events over a period of years.
Mr. López also helped Fox beat out ESPN to win the rights to broadcast the men’s World Cup in 2018 and 2022, prosecutors said. Fox has denied involvement in the scheme and was never accused of wrongdoing by prosecutors.
López’s conviction was vacated six months after the jury verdict by Judge Pamela K. Chen, who ruled that the federal wire fraud statute under which he was charged had been wrongfully applied. Her ruling cited a Supreme Court decision on that statute that was handed down after the trial ended.
But Judge Chen’s ruling was overturned in July, and the conviction against Mr. López and Full Play was reinstated, after a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided that the judge had erred.
In September, Mr. López asked the Supreme Court to hear his appeal, arguing that the honest-services wire fraud statute that was used to convict him did not apply to crimes committed outside the United States and “simply does not criminalize foreign commercial bribery.”
One of the federations that Mr. López was convicted of bribing was headquartered in Paraguay, where his lawyers said commercial bribery was “not a crime.”
“South America has different cultural norms and customs of gift-giving than the United States,” Mr. López’s lawyers wrote.
Mr. López, who is a citizen of both the United States and Argentina, founded the podcasting company Wondery after leaving Fox. That company was sold to Amazon in late 2020 for a reported $300 million. To promote his Supreme Court appeal, Mr. López retained a high-end strategic communications firm, FGS Global, which has spent almost $9 million so far this year lobbying the federal government for clients including the National Football League and Paramount Skydance, according to federal records.
Federal prosecutors, who have for years fought vigorously against overturning the jury convictions in the long-running case, did not offer a reason for seeking a dismissal, saying only that it was “in the interests of justice.” A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York declined to comment further.
Under President Trump, the Justice Department has moved to prioritize prosecutions of violent crime and immigration cases over white-collar matters. Mr. Trump, for his part, has pardoned numerous individuals convicted of bribery and fraud.
In a filing on Tuesday, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, asked the Supreme Court to hear Mr. López’s appeal, reverse the appeals court’s decision and return the case to Judge Chen, who could then dismiss it.
In theory, she could refuse to abide by the government’s wishes, but such instances are exceedingly rare. In February, a federal judge in New York delayed dismissing the case against Mayor Eric Adams after the Justice Department sought to drop its corruption charges, but eventually elected to do so.
In 2020, Judge Emmett G. Sullivan in Washington appointed a former federal judge to advise him on whether to dismiss the conviction of the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I.
The former judge he hired, John Gleeson, argued vigorously against doing so, saying it would reduce the district court to ”a rubber stamp.” But after Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Flynn, Judge Sullivan dismissed the case.
Notably, Mr. Gleeson served as Mr. López’s lead lawyer for his appeal in the FIFA case. Mr. Gleeson did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday, but Josh Dubin, another lawyer on the case, argued that Mr. Flynn’s case was not comparable to Mr. López’s.
“The trial court got this right in throwing this case out in the first place, and we are glad that its correct application of Supreme Court precedent will prevail,” Mr. Dubin said.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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