By Andrew Warshaw
October 14 – FIFA’s ethics committee has thrown out yet another corrupt official with South Africa’s Lindile Kika banned for six years as part of the match-fixing investigation involving friendly games ahead of the 2010 World Cup that sent shockwaves through the country.
Kika was the South African Football Association’s (SAFA) head of national teams at the time and his ban covers five sections of the ethics code.
No precise details of the case were provided, with the ethics committee saying only that proceedings “were opened in November 2014 in relation to several international friendly matches played in South Africa in 2010.”
The investigation against Kika was led by the chairman of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee, Cornel Borbély, in collaboration with FIFA’s Security Division.
Kika was among five SAFA officials suspended in December 2012 after they were named in a match-fixing report that found the results of warm-up matches against Thailand, Bulgaria, Colombia and Guatemala were fixed.
They were reinstated a month later but now, after an investigation lasting almost a year, Kika, understood to be a member of the SAFA’s referees department has been banned again, this time by FIFA rather than domestically.
The afore-mentioned report cited the nefarious football development company, Football 4U, as having provided referees for the matches concerned. The company was later discovered to be a front for an Asian-based betting syndicate headed up by Wilson Raj Perumal, the notorious Singapore fixer.
Back in February 2012, Kika, was quoted as saying: “These guys [Perumal and his organisation] approached us about a referees exchange programme. And to be honest, I did not think twice about it. I thought it was a good opportunity for our local referees to interact with other internationals.”
The matches were all played in May 2010, about a month before South Africa’s opening World Cup game against Mexico on June 11. Exactly who gave the green light within SAFA for arranging the friendlies is a subject of some conjecture but Kika said in 2012: “[The referees’] names were on the FIFA list and that was confirmation for us that they could be trusted.”
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734910579labto1734910579ofdlr1734910579owedi1734910579sni@w1734910579ahsra1734910579w.wer1734910579dna1734910579