Asian football supremo Mohamed bin Hammam was on Saturday banned
from the game for life after being found guilty of corruption following a
two-day hearing of FIFA's ethics committee.
The 62-year-old
Qatari, the president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), had
been accused of trying to buy votes in the FIFA presidential election
with $40,000 cash gifts to Caribbean football officials.
"The
official Mr Bin Hammam is hereby banned from taking part in any kind of
football activity at national or international level for life," said
ethics committee deputy chairman Petrus Damaseb at FIFA headquarters.
Whistle-blowers
said Bin Hammam tried to bribe officials to vote for him by
distributing cash-stuffed envelopes during a Caribbean Football Union
(CFU) meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on May 10-11.
CFU
officials Debbie Minguell and Jason Sylvester, also being investigated
by the ethics committee over claims they helped hand out the money, were
eached banned from football-related activity for a year.
Former
FIFA vice-president and CONCACAF president Jack Warner was also charged
over his alleged role in the affair, but his resignation from FIFA last
month prompted the organisation to drop all the charges against him.
Bin
Hammam's subsequent withdrawal from the presidential election gifted a
fourth straight term in office to his former ally Sepp Blatter, who made
cleaning up FIFA's tarnished image a post-election priority.
Bin Hammam had already all but conceded defeat prior to the announcement of the ethics committee's verdict.
"It
seems likely that FIFA has already made its decision weeks ago," he
wrote in a blog post on Friday. "So none of us should be completely
surprised if a guilty verdict is returned."
Friday's 13-hour
session did not wrap up until after 10:00 pm local time (2000GMT), while
Saturday's hearing began at around 9:00 am local time beneath grey
skies in the Swiss financial capital.
Source: AFP