Explosive testimony at a South American extradition hearing has fuelled claims that Argentina’s military rulers fixed their country’s football World Cup victory in 1978.
The beneficiaries of a corruption ruling would be Holland, who lost 1-3 in the final, and the Dutch media are leading calls for a Fifa inquiry. But the match-fixing allegations focus on the last group match, which the hosts needed to win by four goals to reach the final. They thrashed Peru 6-0.
Conspiracy theories abounded, fanned by reports that shortly after the tournament a huge shipment of grain had been sent from Argentina to Peru.
But according to testimony that emerged earlier this month from Genaro Ledesma, an 80-year-old former Peruvian Senator, the suspiciously easy victory was the result of an even murkier deal struck between the Argentine dictator, General Jorge Videla, and Peru’s military ruler, General Francisco Morales Bermudez.
At an extradition hearing in Buenos Aires to try to summon Bermudez, 90, from Peru to face charges of kidnapping and torture, Ledesma said that the former leader had agreed to throw the World Cup match as part of “Operation Condor”.
This was a clandestine plan cooked up between Latin America’s military rulers to help each other to “disappear” troublesome activists. At least 50,000 people are thought to have been victims of the purges by the dictatorships of eight countries in the 1970s.
A month before the World Cup, General Videla had spirited away 13 Peruvian dissidents, including Ledesma, to a military base in Argentina. Payback, it is alleged, came on the football pitch.
“With what I know now, I cannot say I am proud of our victory,” said Leopoldo Luque, an Argentine striker who scored twice against Peru, quoted by a Dutch tabloid this week. Peru is fighting the attempted extradition of General Bermudez.
Fifa said Friday that it required more hard evidence or an official request to launch an inquiry. “I am aware of this case but from our side there is no open investigation, nothing official has been launched,” said a spokesman. the times, london
