Conmebol president and Fifa vice president Alejandro Domínguez is accused of trying to extort a businessman for 1.6 million dollars – leaving 300 workers jobless – and making death threats against a security worker.
By Håvard Melnæs and Philippe Auclair
In collaboration with Sin Falta
Outside his home country, Alejandro Domínguez seldom, if ever, steals the headlines. At Fifa’s congresses he keeps a low profile, careful not to step out of the shadows of showrunner Gianni Infantino. In Paraguay, it’s a whole other story.
Here, Domínguez is considered to have almost absolute power and seems to act without impunity. He is a close friend – and business partner – of president Santiago Peña. Basilio “Bachi” Núñez, president of the Senate in Asuncion, is another confidant. The Domínguez family has a long history of having an intimate and secretive family and business relationship with the political elite in Paraguay, going back to the dark times of Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship which started in 1954 and lasted all the way to 1989.
In a Senate session in the beginning of April, senator Celeste Amarilla pulled no punches when describing the most powerful football politician on the American continent:
“I wonder how much power Alejandro Domínguez has? He is worse than Lalo. Threats to judges, bought judges, recused judges and disqualified judges”, she said from the Senate floor.
Lalo is Lalo Gomez. He was a senator, a drug trafficker and a money launderer, and killed by the police at his home at 3 o’clock in the morning on 19 August 2024. For many Paraguayans Lalo Gomez was the epitome of the country’s deep rooted corruption among the political and financial elite.
Besides being the president of Conmebol, the South American football confederation, and vice president of Fifa, member of the Fifa council, Alejandro Domínguez spends considerable time attending to his many businesses. One of them is in construction, Grupo Buenaventura SA.
Many consider fair play to be the most important value of football. But as history has taught us, football can’t take fair play for granted, especially when it comes to the administrators of the sport, the football politicians. For years, if not decades, Domínguez has strolled the fine line between business, finance, politics and football politics. Nowadays football politics equals geopolitics, which means that the Conmebol president has a toe or two dipping into the murky waters of global affairs.
This is the first part in a series of articles of which Fifa’s numero dos Alejandro Domínguez is the main character.
“I want to be your friend”
Carlos Guasti is the owner of the construction company Petra Emprendimientos SA.
In December 2023 his company started building Petra Signature in Avenue Molas Lopez in the centre of Asuncion. When the highrise was expected to be completed by March 2027, it would have 38 floors, rising 138 metres above ground with 104 apartments, aimed to provide decent housing for students and young families in the well-to-do neighbourhood of Las Carmelitas. After barely three months of construction, in February 2024, the project encountered unexpected difficulties.
The man behind the unforeseen hurdles was Alejandro Domínguez, president of Conmebol – and member of the Fifa’s review committee that decides Gianni Infantino’s salary.
“It all started more than a year ago when a lawyer called my office and said “Mr Domínguez wants to do business with Carlos and have a meeting. You can come to his office for a coffee, the lawyer told me”, Carlos Guasti recalls.
It turned out “his office” was the Conmebol headquarters in Luque, just outside the capital Asuncion. Guasti brought with him engineers, architects and other key staff from his company. As they entered the Conmebol offices, Guasti and his staff had to give up their mobile phones. This was unusual for a meeting they thought was a business introduction.
They were surprised again when they arrived at the meeting room. It was full of Conmebol employees along with Alejandro Domínguez, who started off by asking about their permission papers to build Petra Signature.
“I told him that we of course had all the permits we needed. This was not our first project, we were not new to this business, at this point we had finished more than 19 skyscrapers. Domínguez got mad with my response and said he would not allow this building to be built. ‘I don’t know how you got this permission, but I don’t like it’.”
The meeting ended, leaving Carlos Guasti and his colleagues baffled. This was not what they had expected. And why were there so many Conmebol staff present at a meeting that clearly was all about Alejandro Domínguez private business interest?
The coming days architects at Conmebol started calling Guasti’s architects. They wanted access to all the paperwork in regard to his company’s permission to build Petra Signature.
“We didn’t give them anything because Domínguez is our competitor. He has a company that has made investments of tens of millions in the construction business. Then Domínguez called me and asked for a new meeting. This time, he asked me to come alone”, says Guasti.
Nor was this meeting related to Conmebol in any way, it concerned Domínguez’ private company, but yet again it took place at the confederation’s offices. Yet again Carlos Guasti had to hand over his phone to security guards.
“In this meeting he told me, ‘I want to be your friend. It is good for you to be my friend. You know, many people in the past have done what you are doing now. And I won, I won, and now they are my friends’.”
A glass of water or a train?
Carlos Guasti tells the story of another contractor’s construction work that was disrupted because Domínguez interfered. Domínguez had made phone calls to friendly judges who stopped this contractor’s building permission. Then he asked for a meeting with him.
When they met, Domínguez pointed to a glass of water and asked the contractor “what do you see here?”. “A glass of water,” the contractor answered. “Well”, said Domínguez, “if I tell a judge that this is a train, it is a train”.
At this point the contractor realised he didn’t stand a chance and agreed to pay Domínguez 500 000 dollars so his company could resume building. The day after Domínguez received his money, the contractor was informed by the judge that all permits were in place to continue with the construction.
“In our meeting Domínguez suggested that we should build our highrise two blocks away. ‘I want you to move there’, he said and added that he had already talked to the mayor of Asuncion and that it was ‘all arranged’.”
Carlos Guasti told Domínguez that they had been building for three months and spent millions of dollars on the project at this stage.
“He then told me: ‘I don’t care. It will be more expensive for you to have a fight with me’.”
Carlos Guasti left the meeting. Domínguez continued to try to stop construction of Petra Signature in different ways, but didn’t succeed because Guasti’s company had all the permits needed.
“I will shoot you”
A few months passed without any major developments and Guasti’s workers, more than 300 of them, continued building the Petra highrise. Right next to Petra is a small artificial football pitch which Alejandro Domínguez owns. One day Domínguez walked out on the pitch and approached a worker on the Petra construction site.
CCTV footage shows the following taking place.
Domínguez: “Who is the boss around here?”
Worker: “I don’t know.”
Domínguez: “You know, I’m the boss here. If you ever touch my property again, I will shoot you. Or I will call the police and have you arrested.”
The Conmebol president had no intention of throwing in the towel and continued to try to terminate the construction work and one day he called the neighbour on the other side of the Petra highrise.
“It gets more interesting now”, Carlos Guasti sighs.
“Because my other neighbour is the Russian embassy. This is like a Netflix movie”, Guasti laughs and shakes his head.
The Russians wanted a meeting with Guasti. Beforehand he had sent all the relevant papers and permissions to the embassy. Carlos Guasti brought his father along as he didn’t want to go alone and wanted someone older with him.
“The meeting starts with the ambassador yelling and cursing. He was really angry and was getting up and down from his chair. A colleague next to the ambassador told me ‘Calm down, don’t worry’ and I didnt know how to take that.”
“After the meeting I called the president of Paraguay because I was scared after the Russian ambassador talked to me in this way. The president told me not to worry and that the embassy could be moved elsewhere if they wanted to. At this time, more than a year had passed, we were on the sixth floor, so I won the battle.”
Or so Carlos Guasti thought. But Alejandro Domínguez hadn’t ended his quest to stop Petra. On 10 February he filed an injunction to suspend the construction citing disturbance to his small football pitch. Domínguez went to a judge at 21:30 that Monday night, and by 09:00 the day after a judge had complied with his complaint and signed a document that suspended Carlos Guasti’s permit.
“What can I say? With a fee of six dollars, Domínguez got a judge to stop my construction that at this point was over 10 million dollars in cost. Overnight 300 workers were jobless. This development was very shocking to all of us.”
Guasti says that a few of Domínguez guards earlier on that same Monday he went to the judge, were caught spreading small pieces of stone on the football pitch. This was filmed by CCTV cameras. In the complaint, the Fifa vice president claimed the football pitch had been lowered two centimetres and this was caused by the construction.
Do you have any proof that the judge who ordered the building to stop is corrupted?
“The proof is that Domínguez complained on a Monday night, and the next morning it was stopped without the judge even trying to collect evidence of the alleged misconduct. This was also an electronic process with date and time so we have all the documents and evidence to say that this is corruption.”
Insulted by Instagram
Alejandro Domínguez’ powers and wealth stem from his family. His father was a close business associate of former dictator Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist for 35 years.
“Domínguez acts like we are in a dictatorship and because he controls so many politicians he is almost untouchable. I called the big lawyers in Paraguay and they all told me the same thing, that they wouldn’t take the case. ‘We like you, Carlos, but there is no point in fighting with him. We cannot defend you in this case’.”
Carlos Guasti organised a demonstration outside the Conmebol headquarters, the football pitch and the Russian embassy where the workers and their families participated. They had signs saying “this is corruption” and hung posters on the Petra construction site. This move didn’t sit well with Alejandro Domínguez.
“He sent hooligans to our construction site to tear down the posters. The next morning he sent hooligans who came on motorcycles to my house to intimidate me. The hooligans tried to pay off one of my guards. My family got stressed, especially my wife because we couldn’t even leave the house to send our two little children to school.”
After that incident Guasti’s wife called out Domínguez on Instagram, calling him a coward and asked: “How can you go to church? How can you bring this pastor to bless everything? How can you say you are a nice guy when you do all this stuff?”
“Then people who are linked to him called me and said “you cannot do this against Alejandro Domínguez. Your wife crossed the line and his family is affected”, says Carlos Guasti.
Soon after, Guasti called Domínguez.
“I told him we need to end this crazy stuff. Let’s sit and talk. My company is losing money, my workers can’t buy food for their families, I never harmed anybody in my life and I’m not used to being in this kind of situation.”
Alejandro Domínguez agreed to a meeting but he wanted somebody else present, pastor Emilio Agüero Esgaib. The pastor is a close friend and confidante of the Conmebol president. In a controversial move, Domínguez had tasked Esgaib, who has been accused of being homophobic and transphobic, to read a prayer before the opening match between Argentina and Canada in the Copa America in 2024.
“I agreed because I said to myself that this is a man of God. He will be a witness to whatever happens.”
“My name is sacred”
The meeting took place the next day at the Crowne hotel. When Carlos Guasti entered the lobby a man came over to him and escorted him to the presidential suit on the top floor. There was Alejandro Domínguez and pastor Emilio Agüero Esgaib.
“For 40 minutes they cried about how I affected their reputation, how my wife had affected Domínguez’ reputation through social media. Among other things, I pleaded for my workers who were jobless, and Domínguez said the workers could come and work for him instead. Domínguez said ‘I do not owe anything to my father or to anyone. I’m here by myself and my name is my guarantee because my name is sacred. You cannot put dirt on my name and your wife has done that’.“
“It was blah, blah, blah for 40 minutes. In my head I was sometimes laughing, because I couldn’t believe these people. When I got to speak I told them I’m the victim here, my workers are the victims, humble people working hard to put food on their families’ tables. I will answer all your questions, but I came here for solutions not for arguing.”
The conversations went back and forth and the meeting ended amicably. Domínguez would get back to Guasti in a couple of days, he told him.
That same evening Guasti received a text message from Domínguez’ lawyer, he wanted to talk “to my lawyer so we can end all this, make an agreement and stop all the false accusations against Alejandro and his family”.
Guasti gave him the phone number of his lawyer, and again emphasised that he and his workers were the victims here. The lawyers agreed to meet and in the meeting Domínguez’ lawyer acknowledged that Guasti’s company in fact had the necessary permits as they had all along since the construction started. But there was another issue, he said. Alejandro Domínguez would make a criminal complaint against the Guasti family for defamation.
“Do you understand? He would do this because my wife called him a coward on Instagram!”
But this could all go away, Domínguez’ lawyer told Guasti’s lawyer in the meeting on 27 February, if Guasti agreed to pay Domínguez 1.6 million dollars.
“It was pure extortion, but it was presented as a present from Domínguez to me. If I paid, we could move on. It was just like the one with the glass of water and the train, remember, who had to pay Domínguez half a million dollars.”
Domínguez’ lawyer added that ‘Alejandro always wins his case’.
“This is the only thing I have talked about where I have no evidence because it was said from lawyer to lawyer and not in writing of course. But I suspect this is normal practice for them, it’s a pattern because it has happened before.”
After the extortion attempt, all negotiations broke down.
“I was not shocked, but this guy is crazy. So I wrote to the ‘man of God’, Emilio Aguero Esgaib, and said I thought we had a good meeting, we spoke about honesty and peace, and now I have received an extortion of 1.6 million dollars. The pastor claimed he hadn’t spoken to Domínguez since our meeting so ‘I don’t know anything about it’.
Senator Celeste Amarilla was not impressed by the pastor Esgaib. During the Senate’s session she told the the audience:
“This is immoral, pastor. There are 300 families on the streets today, 300 families of workers on the streets today, because the construction has stopped.”
The Russian twist
Now the case has been referred to a new judge who lamented the previous judge’s decision to suspend the building of Petra Signature and asked: ‘How can a judge stop the construction without even seeing any evidence of wrongdoing?’
“We were expecting a more normal process. But then what happened? The owner of the property of the Russian embassy, also a former senator, who is now the Paraguayan counsel in the United States, entered the scene. He claimed he was an affected party. He said something about a security risk citing the war between Russia and Ukraine. I was on a business trip when I heard the latest developments and I just started laughing. I called my lawyer and we agreed that they are very creative people.”
On Wednesday the Fifa congress will take place at the five-star Bourbon hotel on the other side of the street of the Conmebol headquarters in Luque. More than 200 football association presidents are on their way. The authorities in Paraguay are not taking any chances and have called on the army to provide security. 700 soldiers are placed in the streets around the congress centre and the luxury hotel that will be the home of the presidents during their stay. Conmebol president Alejandro Domínguez is the host, but will for a brief period of time have to take a step back to his place in the shadow of a Swiss man trying to convince the world that foul play and corruption was the way of “old Fifa”.
