By Paul Nicholson
March 19 – Details have surfaced of yet another complaint by a member of the Sudan FA – this one made in November 2019 – and sent to FIFA protesting ethics violations by SFA president, Dr. Kamal Shaddad, who last month was blessed by a visit from FIFA president Gianni Infantino prior to the CAF electoral congress and the installation of Patrice Motsepe as CAF president.
Nasr ElDin Ahmed Humaidty, SFA vice president, and chairman of the SFA’s Finance, Marketing & Television Committee, complaint echoes those of SFA board member Moataz Mohammed Latif and Dr Muzamil Abu Elgassim Hussain.
The complaint, sent to FIFA’s Joyce Cook (then FIFA Chief Member Associations Officer) and Veron Mosengo-Omba (the FIFA Regional Director-Africa & Caribbean, now newly installed CAF general secretary), says: “I have found it compelling to address you in light of the major and continuing violations of both the FIFA and SFA Statutes being willfully perpetrated by the SFA President, Dr. Kamal Shaddad who have illegally hampered the constitution of both the Ethics Committee and the Audit & Compliance Committee as prescribed by Articles (63) & (47) respectively of the SFA Statutes.”
He continues: “Those violations seriously compromise the realization in the Sudan of FIFA goals articulated in Article (2) para. (g) of the FIFA Statutes: “to promote integrity, ethics and fair play with a view to preventing all methods and practices, such as corruption, doping or match manipulation, which might jeopardize the integrity of matches, competitions, players, officials and member associations or give rise to abuse of association football.”
Reporting that the “SFA governance system is riddled with the lack of key committees (Ethics/Audit & Compliance) to provide a stronger layer of neutrality and scrutiny and dominated by a President behaving in a way that conflict with the goals of SFA”, Humaidty requests that “FIFA to take decisive action to ensure that SFA will in fact, as well as in the perception of stakeholders, the press and the public generally, be structured and operated in a manner that furthers FIFA’s goal stated in Article 2(g) of the FIFA Statutes.”
It fact it appears that FIFA did exactly the opposite, failed to act on the complaints or enforcing compliance on the SFA, but instead endorsing and rewarding Shaddad and his presidency, most recently with Infantino’s high profile visit to the country that promised investment in the country’s football infrastructure.
Local reports say that Infantino, on his visit, pressured for the support of the Motsepe candidacy for CAF president. Infantino maintains that his African trips had nothing to do with the CAF elections or Motsepe’s candidacy. With more information coming to light contradicting Infantino’s claim, it is becoming increasingly hard to take his statements at face value.
And as more detail of FIFA’s failure to act on Sudan’s long standing non-compliance and local requests for support become public, the question is whether FIFA didn’t want to, or deliberately chose not to, act as they already had the compliant president in place they wanted. The word from Africa is that all the member association presidents know the real answer to that question.
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