By Andrew Warshaw
September 8 – Mohamed Bin Hammam’s eagerly awaited appeal against his life ban for bribery will be heard next week – with the outcome almost certain to rubber-stamp his permanent exclusion from all footballing issues.
FIFA confirmed today that its Appeals Committee would pass judgement next Thursday (September 15) on whether the ban handed down by the ethics committee in July should be maintained or overturned.
Bin Hammam was banned after the Ethics Committee ruled he was partly responsible for cash gifts totalling around $1 million (£618,314/€707,664) being paid to officials belonging to the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) at a meeting in Trinidad on May 10.
FIFA have already charged 16 of those officials for their own alleged involvement in the case.
If Bin Hammam’s appeal fails, the Qatari is almost certain to go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and possibly after that to the Swiss courts – just as Swiss club Sion have done in a totally unrelated case.
In a letter to the Ethics panel chair Petrus Damaseb earlier this week, Bin Hammam insisted he had not attempted to bribe anyone to support his election campaign against Sepp Blatter – a campaign he subsequently abandoned – and claimed FIFA would never have dared to take action against him if he were European.
Bin Hammam, former head of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the most senior FIFA official to be found guilty of corruption, admits that next week’s hearing will almost certainly be a mere formality.
“I should not exaggerate my hope for a fair decision,” said Bin Hammam who is likely to skip the hearing and send his lawyers instead, just as he did for the initial verdict, viewed in some quarters as an error of judgement but in others as a statement of his disdain for the entire process.
“I have submitted my case to the FIFA appeals committee, not hoping for justice to prevail but as a protocol to enable me to obtain access to the Court of Arbitration for Sport,” he wrote on his personal website.
And in a clear dig at Blatter, he adds: “The panel from the Appeals Committee is decided by my opponent and in this case, as previously, the judge is the rival.”
Intriguingly, the person chairing next week’s meeting is as yet undecided.
The official appeals committee chairman is Larry Mussenden from Bermuda but he gave evidence in the bribery investigation and has therefore ruled himself out.
Representatives from Madagascar and the Solomon Islands are the respective deputy chairmen though FIFA may not reveal who is chosen to take over from Mussenden until after the meeting, which could spill into a second day.
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