Former finance secretary feels hoodwinked by Acosta

He was not allowed to give testimony in the Volleygate case in Lausanne. But now a Swedish former secretary in the FIVB Finance Committee tells the Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, how he feels hoodwinked by the FIVB president, Ruben Acosta.

Today Jan Svensson works as a tax lawyer in an auditing company in Stockholm and is vice president of the Swedish Volleyball Federation. But in the period from 1982 to 2000 he was working for the FIVB Finance Committee and therefore has firsthand knowledge about the annual report for 2000 and the auditor’s report about it.

However, Jan Svensson had no idea that the report had been changed until Mario Goijman paid him a visit in Stockholm many years later.

“That someone would change the auditor’s report is unthinkable to me. And you know how it is at a congress. Papers just pass by you. I blame myself. I would definitely have said something during the congress if I had discovered the change,” Jan Svensson says to Dagens Nyheter.

Jan Svensson says that when the FIVB’s Finance Committee approved the annual report and the auditor’s report, the note about the commissions was included. But Jan Svensson was not really aware that the commissions were paid to Ruben Acosta himself.

“People may say I am a fool, but honestly it never crossed my mind. It is normal procedure to give commissions to someone who brings in sponsors to a federation. But not to an elected official who was the only one allowed to sign the contract,” says Jan Svensson.

Jan Svensson was one of the witnesses that Mario Goijman suggested should give evidence at this week’s trial in Lausanne but the judge turned him down on the grounds that his testimony was not necessary to reach a judgment in the case. But Svensson hopes that by speaking out in public he will help get out the truth about FIVB affairs.