By Andrew Warshaw
September 6 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) says its investigation into allegations of financial mismanagement by its former President Mohamed Bin Hammam is continuing even though his latest suspension has now expired.
It had been unclear what action the AFC would take once the 30-day provisional suspension imposed on Bin Hammam (pictured top and below), followed by a 20-day extension, reached its conclusion.
However, in a statement, the AFC said its probe into whether Bin Hammam broke AFC statutes remained ongoing since he was still in the middle of FIFA’s own three-month worldwide provisional ban, which came into effect on July 26.
FIFA imposed its ban in order to consider the same allegations of financial impropriety, as well as how to move forward following the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) ruling to overturn a lifetime ban on the 63-year-old Qatari, ordered last year over the cash-for-votes scandal in Trinidad and Tobago.
The CAS said there was not enough evidence but, crucially, added that was not necessarily an admission that Bin Hammam was innocent.
Meantime, in the latest development in the inquiry into whether Bin Hammam illegally misused confederation funds, the AFC, which is based in Kuala Lumpur, has advised Malaysian police that documents related to a payment by International Sports Events (ISE), a shareholder of Singapore-based World Sports Group (WSG), to Bin Hammam have gone missing.
The documents were allegedly handed over to an associate of Bin Hammam according to AFC finance director Kuan Wee Hong.
That associate is reported to be Tony Kang, understood to be the husband of Amelia Gan, who was finance director under Bin Hammam when he ran Asian football.
The missing documents allegedly relate to a $2 million (£1.3 million/€1.6 million) payment made in 2008, monies cited in the already infamous PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) audit commissioned by the AFC, which claims Bin Hammam wrongly used confederation funds for personal use.
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