By Andrew Warshaw
August 30 – Claims that a senior official in Asian football embezzled nearly $10 million (£6.3 million/€8 million) are being investigated in Malaysia, according to reports.
Izany Abdul Ghany, Kuala Lumpur’s police chief of commercial crimes investigations, said his department was acting on a complaint made in a report by an unnamed source within the hierarchy of Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
The person being probed is not Malaysian and Izany said the investigation will likely take months to complete.
“The report is based on the same audit but investigations are still in the preliminary stages so it would be premature to say who [the person is],” Izany disclosed.
He said the report claimed that “give or take” $10 million (£6.3 million/€8 million) had been illegally transferred overseas from AFC accounts between February and June 2008.
The latest revelations are bound to point the finger once again at Mohamed Bin Hammam (pictured below), who is currently suspended for 90 days following allegations of financial mismanagement during his nine-year tenure as AFC President.
Bin Hammam, at one time a credible FIFA presidential candidate, recently had his life ban for bribery over last year’s cash-for-votes scandal overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Not long afterwards, however, his reputation took another battering over claims made in a PricewaterhouseCoopers audit, commissioned by the AFC, that he used confederation funds for personal purposes and breached a number of AFC regulations, including those relating to broadcasting contracts.
Bin Hammam is also serving a three-month suspension imposed by FIFA on July 26 pending the outcome of the probe into AFC finances.
The 63-year-old Qatari insists that, just like his life ban, the current suspensions are politically motivated by opponents, many of whom were against his initial intention to run for the FIFA Presidency against current incumbent Sepp Blatter.
In a letter to 20 Asian national associations, he freely admitted he had made payments but said they were personal donations from his own bank accounts and had nothing whatsoever to do with AFC monies or business.
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