LONDON: Joao Havelange has resigned his position as honorary FIFA president after the governing body’s ethics committee named him as having received bribes.Havelange, 96, served as FIFA president between 1974 and 1998, before being replaced by Sepp Blatter.A Swiss prosecutor’s report was published last year that stated the Brazilian had received funds in the 1990s from World Cup broadcasting deals. It said Havelange alone had been paid 1.5 million Swiss francs (£1 million), with a potential total of 21.9 million Swiss francs (£14.5 million) paid to FIFA executives by ISL, a Swiss-based marketing agency that collapsed due to debts in 2001.An ethics committee report released on Tuesday has now announced that Havelange, along with Nicolas Leoz and Ricardo Teixeira, did receive bribes from the company between 1992 and 2000.Leoz had been president of CONMEBOL before resigning due to health reasons earlier this month. Ricardo Teixeira, Havelange’s ex-son-in-law and the former head of Brazil’s 2014 World Cup organising committee, also cited health reasons when he resigned in March last year.
