British World Cup ticket executive 'a fugitive'

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• published: 11 Jul 2014
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A Brazilian police investigator said an inquiry into illegal ticket touting at the World Cup could expand to include Fifa and domestic football officials. Investigator Fabio Barucke said that police have 50,000 tapped phone calls made between suspected touts in Rio De Janeiro alone, beginning about four weeks before the World Cup began on June 12. That figure included an estimated 900 calls between Ray Whelan and Algerian national Lamine Fofana since the tournament kicked off. Mr Whelan is a director of Match Group which supplies hospitality packages for World Cup matches. On Monday he was detained at the Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro by police who seized tickets for World Cup matches. Shortly before police were set to rearrest Mr Whelan he disappeared. Investigators have declared him a fugitive. Barucke said that virtually all of those 900 calls referred to the sale of tickets in one form or another, the pair often arranging to meet at the Copacabana Palace where many Fifa officials are based. "He (Whelan) sold and negotiated tickets with Fofana knowing that he (Fofana) would sell them at a higher price," Barucke said. Barucke said that the way that tickets were distributed by Fifa created an environment for ticket touting. "Fifa is the biggest source of ticket touting, because it distributes the greatest portion of its tickets to its members, than what it sells (directly to public)," he said. The investigator says he'll soon receive several weeks' worth of security camera tapes from inside the Copacabana Palace, which he said investigators already know was "a bazaar of tickets, it was a market for touting." He said he's confident his investigation will reveal that Fifa officials and authorities from Brazil's national football confederation also funnelled tickets to known touts, in return for a share of the illegal profits. In an earlier detailed statement, the Match Group denied any wrongdoing by Whelan, and said he was willing to cooperate with any investigation, confident that it would exonerate him of any wrongdoing. Under Brazilian law, selling tickets for sporting events above face value is illegal. But it's a crime that normally results in a fine of about $225 (£131) and no prison sentence. However, Barucke said he has formally requested that a judge considers whether there is any evidence of criminal conspiracy against Whelan and at least 11 others already arrested in the alleged scalping - which could result in significant jail time. That would "give a shot of adrenaline" to the police investigation, Barucke said. "If conspiracy applies, it will encourage me to open a new investigation and possibly get to Fifa members," said Barucke. The Match Group, which owns rights to sell World Cup hospitality packages, has acknowledged that Whelan and Fofana discussed cash sales of final tickets for $25,000 (£14,600) in telephone calls wiretapped by Rio de Janeiro police - but say those were packages that included not just tickets but VIP services, hence the high price. In a Thursday statement, Jaime Byrom, the executive chairman of Match Services and Match Hospitality, said that "notwithstanding our belief that the action taken against Mr. Whelan was illegal and baseless, Match Services and I personally remain totally committed to assist the authorities." Earlier this week, Match challenged police to justify the "arbitrary and illegal" arrest of Whelan, a director of Match's accommodation service. He is a brother-in-law of company founders Jaime and Enrique Byrom. Source: APTN Get the latest headlines http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ Subscribe to The Telegraph http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=telegraphtv Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/telegraph.co.uk Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/telegraph Follow us on Google+ https://plus.google.com/102891355072777008500/ Telegraph.co.uk and YouTube.com/TelegraphTV are websites of The Daily Telegraph, the UK's best-selling quality daily newspaper providing news and analysis on UK and world events, business, sport, lifestyle and culture.