By Andrew Warshaw
August 13 – Less than a month after having his life ban for bribery overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), former FIFA Presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam (pictured) is back in the seemingly inescapable claws of FIFA.
FIFA’s new corruption buster Michael Garcia (pictured below), who recently banned Bin Hammam for 90 days despite the CAS ruling, has opened a fresh probe into the conduct of the former Asian Football Confederation (AFC) powerbroker.
Garcia is studying an audit of AFC finances that suggests mismanagement of accounts and billion-dollar contracts while Bin Hammam, currently banned again despite the CAS verdict, was running Asian football.
He is also seeking new evidence that Bin Hammam bribed Caribbean voters while challenging FIFA President Sepp Blatter.
The CAS ruled FIFA failed to prove sufficient evidence against Bin Hammam although crucially did not, in its verdict, say he was innocent of wrongdoing and allowed for a fresh inquiry to take place if more information came to light.
Bin Hammam has long claimed FIFA is pursuing a vendetta but in a statement Garcia, a former United States attorney who was appointed last month to head the investigatory chamber of FIFA’s new two-chamber Ethics Committee, said there were now grounds to go ahead with the new investigation.
“The chairman of the investigatory chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee, Michael J Garcia, today formally opened investigation proceedings against Mohamed Bin Hammam,” a FIFA statement said.
“These proceedings follow the provisional banning for Bin Hammam for 90 days as established by the Ethics Committee on July 26 after a preliminary investigation of the case.”
Bin Hammam withdrew his candidacy days before the June 2011 election over allegations that he had tried to buy the votes of Caribbean officials by handing them $40,000 (£25,000/€33,000) each in brown envelopes at a meeting in Port of Spain.
Blatter was subsequently re-elected unopposed for a fourth term but Bin Hammam always claimed the campaign against him was retribution for having challenged the veteran Swiss, an argument legal voices close to the case say is spurious at best.
Bin Hammam recently told BBC World Service: “I promise you I will not quit until I clear my name.
“I have one aim, one mission, one target and that is to clear my name and then I say goodbye.”
Bin Hammam is already suspended by the AFC following the afore-mentioned audit by Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC) in which he is alleged to have breached a number of AFC regulations including relating to gifts and bribery.
The report states that in 2008 “significant payments (totalling $250,000 (£159,000/€203,000)) have also been made to Mr Jack Warner (pictured above) for which no reason has been provided”.
Warner, FIFA’s outspoken former senior vice-president, was the man alleged to have been facilitating the infamous Trinidad and Tobago meeting where the bribery apparently took place.
He resigned from all football activities when the scandal came to light but is still pursuing his political career in his homeland.
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