{{The son of the Brazilian football legend Pele has been sentenced to 33 years in jail for laundering money raised from drug trafficking.}}<\/p>\n
Edinho is a retired footballer who played goalkeeper for Pele’s old club, Santos, in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
He was first arrested in 2005 and has served a sentence for drug trafficking offences and links with a notorious drug dealer in the city of Santos.<\/p>\n
He admits he had a drug problem but denies the trafficking charges.<\/p>\n
The ruling was issued by a judge in the nearby coastal city of Praia Grande, in Sao Paulo state.<\/p>\n
Brazilian media have not been able to contact Edinho, whose real name is Edson Cholbi do Nascimento, but they say he is expected to appeal.<\/p>\n
Edinho, 43, works as a goalkeeping coach at Santos.<\/p>\n
{{US childhood}}<\/p>\n
Pele, or Edson Arantes do Nascimento, played all his professional career in Brazil for Santos.<\/p>\n
Playing for Brazil, he won the World Cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970 and was acclaimed as the greatest footballer of his generation.<\/p>\n
He retired in 1974, but made a comeback a year later for New York Cosmos.<\/p>\n
Edinho is Pele’s third son from his first marriage. He was five when the family moved to New York to play for Cosmos.<\/p>\n
When he returned to Brazil he decided to pursue a career in professional football – as a goalkeeper, much to his father’s surprise.<\/p>\n
He was Santos’ goalkeeper in 1995 when the team reached the Brazilian league final, losing the title to Botafogo.<\/p>\n
His detention and alleged involvement with drug gangs took most people in Brazil by surprise.<\/p>\n
Pele, now 73, went to visit his son several times in jail.<\/p>\n
“God willing, justice will be done. There is not a shred of evidence against my son,” he said in 2006.<\/p>\n
Edinho said that his father was his idol.<\/p>\n
Four other people have also been convicted for many laundering, including a man accused of controlling much of the drug trafficking in the region – Ronaldo Duarte Barsotti, known as Naldinho.<\/p>\n
wirestory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The son of the Brazilian football legend Pele has been sentenced to 33 years in jail for laundering money raised from drug trafficking.}} Edinho is a retired footballer who played goalkeeper for Pele’s old club, Santos, in the 1990s. He was first arrested in 2005 and has served a sentence for drug trafficking offences and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000052494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-14759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-justice","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000052494,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14759.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14759.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14759.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14759.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14759.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14759.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000052494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14759"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=14759"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=14759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}