Exclusive: by Paul Nicholson
March 25 – Having already stepped in to the row surrounding the election of the Antigua and Barbuda FA executive committee and demanding a new vote is conducted, FIFA may have to step into the region again following a letter from the Antiguan president of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) Gordon ‘Banks’ Derrick to its federations recommending who they should vote for at the upcoming CONCACAF elections, April 19 in Panama.
A copy of the letter has been supplied to Insideworldfootball.
The big winner in the CFU proposals is Sunil Gulati, the president of the US Soccer Association who is running against Mexican federation president Justino Compean for a place on the FIFA executive committee.
Derrick’s letter to the CFU member associations (they make up the majority of all CONCACAF votes) says that, after a review of the individuals standing, the CFU executive committee has approved a list of candidates that it believes are the best options for the reconstruction of CONCAFCAF and whom CFU members should vote for.
The Panama elections will see only two positions contested, one for the FIFA execuive committee post vacated by the retirement of Chuck Blazer, and one for the CONCACAF executive committee position where Gulati is already the incumbent.
The letter lists the ‘approved’ CFU candidates but does not mention the names of their opposition in the election. The big loser is Mexico’s Compean. Gulati is also running for a position on the CONCACAF executive committee, though the CFU are recommending his Canadian rival Victor Montagliani for this position. Gulati has said he will step down from the CONCACAF executive committee if he is elected to the FIFA executive committee.
Gulati visited Antigua after the letter had been issued.
Following allegations of irregularities surrounding the ABFA executive committee electoral process and other conduct within the federation, a joint FIFA/CONCACAF delegation visited Antigua and conducted an investigation.
The investigation found various issues from dubious interpretation of the federation’s statutes, to seemingly disputable deadlines set for the submissions of candidates for the election. The result was that some candidates were subsequently barred from standing and the incumbent members of the ABFA executive elections committee ran almost unopposed.
FIFA’s letter to ABFA stated that “after a thorough analysis of the findings, it appears that the ABFA statutes were almost certainly not respected in order to prevent competing candidates from participating”.
The new election was originally to be conducted before April 15, before the CONCACAF congress. Last week FIFA extended the deadline for the election to take place to May 15.
Last year, both Derrick and his colleague, Everton ‘Batow’ Gonsalves, head of the Antigua and Barbuda Football Association, were reportedly cited by FIFA for corruption in the ‘cash-for-votes’ scandal in Trinidad. Both were fined and temporarily suspended.
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