Two high-profile targets of a sprawling federal investigation into corruption in global soccer have reached a deal with the Justice Department to resolve bribery charges brought more than a decade ago.
The targets, Hugo Jinkis and Mariano Jinkis, a father and son from Argentina, are expected to appear in Brooklyn federal court on Thursday to inform a judge that they have reached a deferred prosecution agreement, which was struck over the past several months, according to prosecutors.
The terms of the agreement were not made public on Tuesday, but such deals typically allow criminal charges against defendants to be dropped if they meet a set of conditions. The father and son are expected to be released on bond on Thursday, according to a letter from federal prosecutors in Brooklyn filed to the court.
As part of the deal, the defendants have agreed to admit that they paid “tens of millions of dollars in commercial bribes” to officials from South American soccer organizations in exchange for television and sponsorship rights to lucrative soccer tournaments, prosecutors wrote. The payments, according to prosecutors, started in the 1990s and lasted until 2015, when the two men were indicted as part of the Justice Department’s probe of corruption in FIFA, soccer’s worldwide governing body.
Lawyers for the men did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Unlike many other defendants in the case, the Jinkises were able to avoid extradition and remained fugitives in Argentina. In May, The New York Times reported that the two men had traveled that month to New York for secret plea negotiations with federal prosecutors.
Their arrival came amid a flurry of questions surrounding corruption in international soccer, as the United States was set to host the World Cup this summer. President Trump himself drew accusations of corruption during the tournament when he called on FIFA’s president to review a suspension against an American player. The suspension was subsequently overturned.
To date, the federal government has secured more than two dozen convictions in the long-running corruption case. Several defendants have served time in prison; many others have agreed to cooperate and pay large fines while spending years collaborating with prosecutors and serving as witnesses at trial.
The Jinkises, by contrast, are unlikely to face time behind bars.
In their filing, prosecutors said they would file a new charge against the two men, which the Jinkises will formally plead not guilty to on Thursday. It is not clear whether the deal will include financial penalties or restitution, although that is frequently part of such arrangements.
In the last 10 years, a Swiss bank and an Argentine sports marketing firm have agreed to deferred prosecution agreements in the case, turning over a combined total of nearly $200 million in fines and forfeiture. But no individuals have been given such deals to date.
The prosecution and the convictions that arose from the case have long been viewed as a source of pride within the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office.
But during the second Trump administration, the Justice Department has undermined the investigation, threatening to reverse years of efforts to root out corruption from the world’s most popular sport.
In December, the U.S. solicitor general, D. John Sauer, asked for the dismissal of the indictments against Hernán López, a former Fox Corporation executive, and Full Play, a sports media company owned by the Jinkises. Mr. López and the company were convicted at trial in 2023; those convictions were subsequently vacated by the judge overseeing the case, but then reinstated in July 2025 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Mr. López and Full Play had been appealing their convictions to the Supreme Court at the time. The charges against them were formally dismissed in May.
Since then, five other defendants in the case have sought to have their convictions overturned and potentially claw back millions in fines, a request opposed by the Justice Department.
The agency has argued that while pursuing the prosecution of Mr. López and Full Play did not “fit within the administration’s priorities,” it wished to maintain the charges against the other defendants who were accused of participating in the same bribery schemes.
The post In FIFA Corruption Case, Father and Son Will Admit They Paid Bribes appeared first on New York Times.
