Source: www.guardian.co.tt
FIFA asked its ethics committee to investigate 16 Caribbean football leaders yesterday over a widening bribery scandal involving former presidential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam. The officials are suspected in connection with being offered or taking $40,000 in cash to back Bin Hammam against FIFA President Sepp Blatter, then denying the corruption attempt to investigators led by former FBI director Louis Freeh.
The suspects from 11 Caribbean countries include Colin Klass of Guyana, a long-standing ally of former Caribbean football strongman Jack Warner. FIFA said that Klass, a member of the governing body’s Futsal and Beach Soccer Committee, has been provisionally suspended “after consideration of the specific information received on this matter.” FIFA says the 16 will be invited for fresh interviews by Freeh’s team as part of an investigation led by Robert Torres, a supreme court judge from Guam. “It is important to note that the investigations are still ongoing, and that it is therefore possible that further proceedings could be opened in the future,” FIFA said in a statement.
The list also includes Mark Bob Forde from Barbados, who was a FIFA-approved international referee for almost 20 years. Haiti federation president Yves Jean-Bart is also under investigation. He made a speech at the FIFA Congress on June 1 criticising English officials who wanted Blatter’s election delayed while corruption allegations were fully investigated.
The second wave of cases follows bin Hammam’s life ban last month. FIFA’s ethics panel also suspended two Caribbean Football Union staffers for one year for their part in distributing the cash-stuffed brown envelopes in a Trinidad hotel. FIFA then invited officials from CFU member countries for “truthful and complete reporting” of what happened during the Qatari candidate’s May 10 campaign visit to Trinidad. FIFA’s legal process typically sees accused officials called before the ethics panel, which decides if the evidence demands further investigation and a full hearing some weeks later. Those under suspicion face being provisionally suspended from any football duty, including contacting other officials and attending national team games. The scandal threatens to remove some of the Caribbean’s most influential football leaders during a busy period of 2014 World Cup qualification matches. Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana — who each have officials on the FIFA list — have been drawn in a four-team, second-round group which is played from September to November. Their group is completed by Bermuda, whose officials were among the original whistleblowers exposing the scandal.
Barbados also saw FIFA suspend its most senior official, Lisle Austin, for one year on Wednesday. Austin, a member of FIFA’s referees committee, broke football rules by going to an ordinary civil court with a legal grievance against the CONCACAF continental body in the aftermath of the bribery scandal. Warner resigned all his football duties and privileges in June rather than face FIFA justice. A leaked report revealed that the five-man ethics panel believed it had “compelling” evidence of a bribery conspiracy between Warner and his longtime FIFA colleague bin Hammam. Warner had been an executive committee member for 28 years and was president of CONCACAF and the CFU, representing 25 of the 208 FIFA members.