ZURICH, (Reuters) – Two members of FIFA’s executive committee linked to claims of vote-selling for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup decision were provisionally suspended yesterday as President Sepp Blatter lamented a “sad day for football”.
Soccer’s governing body are also probing allegations that unnamed bidding countries had entered into agreements which would breach the rules and code of ethics, Claudio Sulser, head of the ethics committee, told reporters.
FIFA, however, said they did not expect the Dec. 2 decision on the two tournaments’ hosts to be postponed.
“It’s a sad day for football,” said FIFA president Sepp Blatter at the end of the conference.
“In football, you have the good players and bad players and as president of FIFA it is my duty to protect the reputation of football and FIFA from manipulation or bad behaviour.”
The allegations, the result of a Sunday Times investigation by reporters posing as lobbyists for an American consortium, have cast a huge shadow over the race to host the 2018 and 2022 where only the 24 executive committee members vote.
England and Russia are bidding to host the 2018 World Cup along with joint bids from Spain/Portugal and Belgium/Netherlands while Japan, South Korea, Qatar, United States and Australia are candidates for 2022.
FINAL DECISION
Sulser said said that Oceania Football Confederation president Reynald Temarii, a former professional player for French club Nantes, and Nigeria’s Amos Adamu had been banned from any football-related activity for 30 days over claims they offered to sell their votes.
Sulser also announced that four more officials — all former executive committee members — had been suspended “in relation to an alleged breach of the FIFA statutes, the FIFA code of ethics and the FIFA disciplinary code linked to the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups”.
They were named as Slim Aloulou (Tunisia), Amadou Diakite (Mali), Ahongalu Fusimalohi (Tonga) and Ismael Bhamjee (Botswana). In 2006, Bhamjee was sent home from the World Cup in Germany and subsequently quit the executive committee for selling match tickets at three times their face value.
