Arrest warrant against Kenneth Zseremeta, coach reported for sexual abuse

The Panamanian technical director, formerly in charge of the Venezuelan youth women's team, was denounced by more than twenty footballers in the last week.

A court in Venezuela ordered the capture of Panamanian coach Kenneth Zseremeta after being accused of sexual abuse and harassment by 24 Venezuelan soccer players who he directed in teams of minor categories, including the star Deyna Castellanos, according to the prosecution.

The Public Ministry "requested and was agreed by the corresponding court: arrest warrant" against Zseremeta and one of his assistants in his time as coach, William Pino, the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, published on Twitter, who described them as "aberrated ”.

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Hours earlier, in a statement, the exceller denied the accusations: "I am constitutionally accepting the presumption of my innocence, until proven otherwise."

In the document sent to the AFP, the coach stressed that he directed more than 600 players during his passage through different categories of the Venezuelan women's team (2008-2017) and that when he left the South American country he did so without a “criminal record”.

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On Tuesday, 24 Venezuelan soccer players accused him of physical, psychological and sexual abuse in an open letter published on social networks.

"Last year (2020), one of our colleagues confessed to us that she had been sexually abused since she was 14 years old (2014) by the coach," they reported without revealing the identity of the victim.

“As a result of this confession, different colleagues have expressed experiences of harassment, both by telephone, such as questions and inappropriate invitations, bribes to keep them within the selection, gifts out of context, massages and different situations that were definitely not normal and that we were not we understood ”, they added.

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With Zseremeta as DT, Venezuela won the South American U-17 Championship twice and qualified for the Category World Cup three times: Trinidad and Tobago-2010, Costa Rica-2013 and Jordan-2016.

In that period, "we were subjected to interviews, programs, documentaries and films, in which I do not see any of the negative or traumatic psychological assessments that are manifested in this letter," said the Panamanian in his statement, initially disclosed by the Venezuelan journalist. Erasmus Provence.

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"We never subjected (the players) to racism or persecution, stereotypes, because of their sexual disposition."

Pinto also denied the allegations against him in another statement.

They ask FIFA disqualification

The Venezuelan Football Federation (FVF) announced that it asked FIFA, Conmebol and Concacaf to investigate Zseremeta.

The president of the FVF, Jorge Giménez, asked "to order the disqualification (of the Panamanian) in the professional exercise as sports technical director or any sports position", in a letter sent to the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, and to the person in charge of the Ethics Commission of that organization, Jorge Palacio, and disclosed by the local entity.

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After leaving Venezuela, the Panamanian worked in his native country and in the Dominican Republic.

Zseremeta, who was seeking a new position, said that the letter published by the players has "a flagrant objective of labor obstruction" and considers that "due process has been corrupted in the media."

The current coach of the Venezuelan women's team, the Italian Pamela Conti, expressed on Wednesday "full support and support for our players in the face of their decision to raise their voices."

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