By Andrew Warshaw in Moscow
June 25 – FIFA’s Ethics Committee looks set to announce their eagerly awaited verdict on world football’s most sordid bribery scandal on July 18, according to sources close to the case.
The same sources have indicated to insideworldfootball that Asian football supremo Mohamed Bin Hammam, accused of paying cash bungs to 25 Caribbean FIFA members in exchange for votes, will almost certainly be banned for life and be forced to go to appeal to clear his name.
Bin Hammam, who was initially suspended along with FIFA vice-president Jack Warner pending a full inquiry, vehemently denies any wrongdoing despite the Ethics Committee revealing in a leaked 17-page prima facie report that there was “comprehensive, convincing and overwhelming” evidence he tried to buy votes during his Presidential campaign.
The 62-year-old Asian Football Confederation chief, who pulled out of the presidential race against Sepp Blatter just before being temporarily barred for allegedly condoning payments of $40,000 (£24,000) in bundles of cash, is determined to see the case through – even if that means appealing his sentence.
Bin Hammam believes the Ethics Committee’s findings are preliminary with no basis in law and that their whole make-up is flawed because of the media leaks and public statements made by individual members before the case has even reached its course.
Last week Warner resigned from all footballing activities as the net closed in around him but Bin Hammam has since told colleagues he will not follow suit before the July 18 hearing, a date that has not been confirmed by FIFA but which tallies with the time scale FIFA allowed for the investigation to take place.
It understood that Bin Hammam is able to prove he was not responsible for bringing $1.6 million (£1 million) into Trinidad on May 10 or 11 when the bribes were allegedly paid.
As Qatar’s most powerful administrator, he is also anxious not to throw in the towel for fear of further undermining the controversial decision to award the 2022 World Cup to the tiny Gulf state.
Despite all this, one high-ranking FIFA administrator has let it be known privately that Bin Hammam will almost certainly be found guilty at the mid-July meeting and be forced to go to appeal, so powerful is the evidence against him.
Meanwhile, fresh information has emerged over the circumstances surrounding Warner’s surprise resignation, interpreted by many as a move to save his political career by not being formally thrown out of FIFA.
insideworldfootball has been told by various colleagues of Warner’s that he walked away before receiving the Ethics Committee’s so-called “reasoned decision” that implicated him in the bribery case, not because of the case per se, but because he was worried about the growing pressure being faced by members of his family.
It is also understood that a copy of the Ethics Committee report, having initially failed to reach Warner, was sent to his lawyer and then faxed to CONCACAF headquarters in New York to make sure it got to him personally – even though he is not part of the secretariat based there.
Warner believes, rightly or wrongly, that opponents within CONCACAF were responsible for leaking the documents and conspiring against him and is equally sure he would not have being banned for life merely as an “accessory to corruption”, as the Ethics Committee’s interim report states.
The inquiry, Warner has stressed to aides, was still ongoing at the time he resigned.
As more and more details emerge surrounding the roles played – or not played – by the various parties, insideworldfootball has learned too that Warner, Minister of Works and Transport in the Trinidad and Tobago Government, was in a Cabinet meeting the very day Bin Hammam entered the country for the now-infamous May 10-11 meeting when the bribes were allegedly paid.
While this may have been a deliberate ploy and in no way disproves there was collusion between the pair, it only adds to the difficulty separating fact from fiction in a case that has had more twists and turns than an Agatha Christie novel.
Contact the writer of this story at zib.l1734937590labto1734937590ofdlr1734937590owedi1734937590sni@w1734937590ahsra1734937590w.wer1734937590dna1734937590
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