Firm Facilitates Ex-FIFA Executive’s Prison Release

July 5, 2023 - Juan Ángel Napout – the former head of South American soccer’s governing body CONMEBOL – was recently released from prison following two oral arguments by Marc Weinstein in the Eastern District of New York.

Napout – the former head of the Paraguayan Football Association and president of the South American Football Confederation – was sentenced to 108 months’ imprisonment in August 2018 following his conviction on two counts of wire fraud and one count of racketeering conspiracy. Napout was charged as part of the Department of Justice’s sweep of various FIFA officials around the globe in an investigation into corruption at the highest levels of the international governing bodies of soccer concerning the media rights to international soccer tournaments.

On May 15, an HHR team filed a motion for compassionate release to reduce Napout’s sentence, arguing that Napout should be released in large part due to a years long delay of medical treatment for cataracts that slowly left him blind. On July 5, and over strenuous government objection, the Court reduced Napout’s sentence to time served. Napout ended up serving 66 months of his original 108-month sentence. “The bottom line is, Napout has been subjected to what can only be described as cruel lack of treatment,” said U.S. District Judge Pamela K. Chen. Hughes Hubbard also helped secure the consent of officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Napout to self-deport to his home country of Paraguay.

Napout arrived home on July 7 and is currently obtaining all required medical treatments.

The decision was covered in Reuters, and the case was previously covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Law360 and Global Investigations Review.

In addition to Weinstein, the HHR team on the compassionate release motion also included James Henseler and Jacob Stulberg.