By Andrew Warshaw
December 5 – Beleaguered former Asian football chief Mohamed Bin Hammam will have the first of his two appeal hearings on January 23 at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Bin Hammam was banned from all football activities for life by FIFA last July over the cash-for-votes bribery scandal, costing him the Presidency of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) which subsequently appointed China’s Zhang Jilong in his place on an interim basis.
Zhang also holds bin Hammam’s seat on the FIFA Executive Committee but the one-time Qatari powerbroker fiercely opposes Zhang’s new position for constitutional reasons and now has his chance to have his say after his initial approach to the CAS for an injunction to stop the AFC action was rejected pending a full hearing.
Bin Hammam has also, of course, appealed to the CAS separately against the lifetime ban itself, no date for which has yet been fixed. He is increasingly anxious to have a ruling on both issues before May next year when the next AFC Congress is scheduled to hold a full-time Presidential election.
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