By Mark Baber
March 15 – FIFA has written to the Guatemala FA expressing concern over the decision by Guatemala’s national sport tribunal to overturn the lifetime ban imposed for match-fixing on three national team players.
Guatemala’s national sport tribunal, the Court of Honour of the Autonomous Sports Confederation of Guatemala (CDAG), on March 7 overturned the lifetime bans on Guillermo Ramirez Ortega, Yony Wilson Flores Monroy and Gustavo Adolfo Cabrera Marroquin, for their involvement in alleged match-fixing activities, saying that the evidence was insufficient to merit a guilty finding.
The original bans were imposed by the disciplinary body of the Guatemala Football Association
The case was based on the statements of four players, Manuel Leon, Wilfred Velasquez, Ricardo Jerez and Luis Rodriguez who claimed their teammates had offered them money to influence the results of three matches – the CONCACAF Champions League match between CSD Municipal v Santos Luguna (19 October 2010), the Guatemala-Venezuela match (6 June 2011) and the Costa Rica-Guatemala match of (25 May 2012).
The accused players maintained their innocence throughout, saying their accusers stood to benefit from their removal from the team.
FIFA extended the lifetime ban imposed by the Guatemala FA on the three players to have worldwide effect on 23 October 2012.
In its letter, FIFA stresses the importance of the fight against match-fixing and “notes that the three sanctioned players had the possibility to follow an adequate process at the sporting jurisdictional level and considers that the decision apparently taken by CDAG constitutes a clear violation of the FIFA Statutes with regards to the independence of the member associations and the non-interference of third parties.”
FIFA has asked the Guatemala FA “to take the relevant measures to preserve its independence and solve this issue, and to inform football’s world governing body by 18 March about those measures. If this is not done, then FIFA will have no choice but to present this matter to the relevant bodies within the organisation in order to take the appropriate measures, which could include a suspension of the association.”
The Court of Honour of the CDAG is the highest sports court in Guatemala, with its members solely elected by the General Assembly of the CDAG which includes a delegate from each of the national sports federations and associations.
Similar national sports tribunals have, of course, been set up by a number of countries in recent years, including in the UK, New Zealand, and Italy. In November 2012 the Italian national sport tribunal overturned Alberto Fontana’s ban for match fixing after he had been handed a three-and-a-half-year ban for his role in a 3-0 Coppa Italia loss to Chievo in November 2010, with a verdict that had been upheld by the Federal Court.
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