By Andrew Warshaw
October 21 – Yet another Asian country has become embroiled in corruption allegations as the fallout from the Mohamed bin Hammam era continues. Nepal’s football association (ANFA) is implementing “corrective measures”, say FIFA, amid claims by some of its own senior officials regarding embezzlement of funds.
FIFA say the Nepalese FA were guilty of an “unsatisfactory” external audit in 2012, when “unappropriated cash movements” were identified, and was also targeted by an ethics committee investigation in 2013.
FIFA’s comments, quoted by Reuters, were in response to the agency reporting that two ANFA vice-presidents had asked FIFA ethics investigator Michael Garcia to look into the activities of ANFA president Ganesh Thapa, and specifically how funds to Nepal from FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) were used.
“With the ANFA mired in unresolved allegations of impropriety and scandal, we respectfully request that an investigation be immediately launched by the FIFA Ethics Committee Investigatory Chamber to resolve these many concerns and questions,” said an emailed letter to FIFA.
The request apparently came after the country’s public accounts committee ordered an investigation into Thapa, an AFC vice president, alleging he and ANFA Vice President Lalit Krishna Shreshtha “may have violated the FIFA Code of Ethics and the ANFA Statutes.”
Thapa has repeatedly claimed he has done nothing wrong.
Last week, one of Asian football’s most senior figures, Mongolian FA president Ganbold Buyannemekh, a member of the Asian Football Confederation’s executive committee, was banned for five years by FIFA for “soliciting and accepting payments” linked to one of the most damaging corruption scandals to hit the region.
FIFA’s ethics committee found that Buyannemekh received money in 2009 linked to bin Hammam’s election to the FIFA executive committee – when he narrowly beat current AFC chief Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa – and then linked to the FIFA presidential election two years later.
The man responsible in the south Asian region for managing development funds at the time was Sri Lanka’s Manilal Fernando, a former FIFA executive committee member and AFC vice-president who was banned for life in 2013 after he was found to have violated FIFA’s code of ethics.
Fernando’s appeal to overturn an original eight-year ban on him failed disastrously as FIFA’s appeal panel instead upheld a request from Garcia to increase the ban on the former Sri Lankan FA chairman to a lifetime sanction.
The renewed adverse off-the-field publicity will do little to enhance efforts to rid the confederation of the stench of corruption despite impassioned speeches by some members of the AFC’s heirarchy insisting concrete steps are in place to prevent further criminal activity.
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