football federations. advertisers that wanted access to the tournaments had to go through traffic because they had exclusive marketing rights. he started out as a salesman and ended up a millionaire. reporter: according to the 61-page indictment, avila won the rights by paying off fifa officials. he pleaded guilty to various criminal activities including fraud, bribery and money laundering. as part of plea, he agreed to forfeit $151 million. former president of the brazilian football federation was among those accused of bribery and arrested in raids on wednesday. the indictment doesn t reveal the names of others accused of taking bribes, but it says by 2013, avila and co-conspirator s agreed to pay $100 million in
bribes for a contract spread among 11 fifa officials including $15 million each for the top three officials. the question for many in brazil, what else will the man, once called the owner of brazilian football reveal? he was involved with buying and selling players. he was involved with the advertisement. he was involved with broadcasting rights. after a while he had a stake in a football team, the ft. lauderdale strikers. as u.s. officials put it, this is the beginning of their crackdown. you are watching cnn newsroom. the rescues continue in the state of texas amid devastating floods and more rain could be on the way. hundreds of people say a final good-bye to blues legend b.b. king.
this time they are calling for protest over plans for a constitutional amendment that would give the president more power. the president of fifa is beginning his fifth term in charge of soccer s governing body. and why the united states timed the announcement of a mayor corruption probe to try to derail his election bid. he won vote in zurich. now he effaces the tough task of restoring public faith after the arrest of seven leading soccer officials. i will take responsibility for this storm. i will share it with the executive committee that met today because it is the government that needs to take responsibility for fifa, not only the president but i do shoulder this responsibility. i said so at congress. i will do so. and we have just published an opinion piece on fixing fifa. you can find that at cnn.com.
few football fans have ever heard of the brazilian sports marketing company traffic or its founder jose avila but they are at the heart of many of the criminal charges involving fifa and the world s most popular sport. we look at the man who pleaded guilty to federal charges in the u.s. and his business which is being called a bribe machine. reporter: he got his start as a sports announcer covering brazilian soccer in the 70s. he built a small media empire with tv stations and newspapers. then went to sports marketing. here in sao paulo is where he has his headquarters, traffic sports but he does business across the country and abroad. in fact, according to the u.s. department of justice, traffic group came to dominate the lucrative contracts with fifa s american and latin american
i wish you good deliberations and the spirit of fair play and respect. thank you for your attention. [ applause ] hearing from the fifa president, sepp blatter there, speaking basically about a fight against match fixing. a fight against racism. a fight against discrimination. opening there, talk together congress there. but again, ahead of an s location and a lot of people questioning what will happen to him and whether he will continue to lead fifa. so opening remarks of fifa congress. there is much more to come and we have teams covering it for the next several hours. before we go this hour, we have to get this in. everyone loves a spelling bow. for the second year in a row we have co-champions in the biggest spieling bee in the u.s. 13-year-old ivanya and