MILAN: An Argentine businessman who was indicted by US authorities in connection to the FIFA corruption case turned himself in to Italian police on Tuesday.

Bolzano police official Giuseppe Tricarico told The Associated Press that Alejandro Burzaco arrived at the local police station Tuesday morning with an Italian and Spanish-speaking lawyer.

Police spokesman Francesco Bianco later told the AP that Burzaco, who is accused of being involved in a $110 million bribe, was placed under house arrest after a hearing in the northern Italian city.

The 50-year-old Burzaco, who has dual Argentine-Italian nationality, has rented a house in Bolzano.

Burzaco was one of 14 people indicted by US authorities on May 27 on bribery, vote-rigging and other corruption charges. Seven of the indicted men were arrested during dawn raids on a luxury Zurich hotel.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who has not been officially implicated in the investigation, won re-election to a fifth, four-term on May 29. But four days later, as the scandal intensified, the 79-year-old Blatter said he would resign and start the process of looking for a successor.

In a separate Swiss investigation, authorities seized documents at FIFA headquarters in their probe into the bidding contests for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.

Burzaco was named on Interpol’s most wanted list last Wednesday, along with five other men with ties to FIFA.

Burzaco and Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, also from Argentina, were named in the US indictment saying they bribed soccer officials in exchange for the media and commercial rights to international tournaments.

Argentine Secretary of Security Sergio Berni said Tuesday that the whereabouts of the Jinkis’ was still unknown. Berni told Radio del Plata that authorities were trying to find them.

Burzaco, who is the president of sports marketing company Torneos y Competencias, and the Jinkis’ merged their companies to form part of Datisa, which obtained the exclusive worldwide rights to the 2015, 2019 and 2023 Copa America tournaments as well as the 2016 centenary edition of the South American championship.

The indictment states that Datisa agreed to pay $110 million in bribes to Jeffrey Webb, Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel, Jose Maria Marin, Nicolas Leoz and several other soccer officials for the rights.

Leoz, a former FIFA executive committee member who is under house arrest in Paraguay, was also named on the Interpol list, as was FIFA vice president Jack Warner and Jose Margulies, a Brazilian broadcast executive.

Warner was arrested in Trinidad but has been released on bail.

Australia bid had no chance

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Australia’s bid for the 2022 World Cup never stood a chance because their officials had not understood that votes were secured in back rooms according to “commercial interests,” the country’s soccer supremo Frank Lowy has said.

The bid for the 2022 finals awarded to Qatar has come under renewed scrutiny after the arrests in Switzerland of 14 soccer and media executives in a corruption scandal that has rocked global soccer governing body FIFA.

Swiss authorities are probing the bidding process for 2022 and the 2018 tournament awarded to Russia, while other World Cups, including last year’s finals in Brazil and the 2010 edition in South Africa, are also under investigation by local authorities.

Australia’s failed bid is also being probed by national police, sparking calls from local media for Football Federation Australia (FFA) president Lowy to step down until it is cleared of any wrongdoing.

Lowy, however, said Australia was guilty only of being naive in campaigning for a vote he described as effectively pre-determined.

“On the subject, did we have a chance or didn’t we have a chance: As it turned out to be, it was a competition between various associations and some other associations ... nation states,” the 84-year-old shopping center magnate told Sky News on Tuesday.

“The states talk to each other about their commercial and diplomatic interests. They agreed between each other what they do for each other as part of those negotiations.

“We know that now. At that time none of us had any idea it was done in secret, so we really had no chance.