adminZURICH. — FIFA has suspended a South African soccer official for six years as part of a match-fixing investigation involving friendly games ahead of the 2010 World Cup.
Lindile Kika, who was the South African Football Association’s head of national teams at the time, has been banned from all soccer-related activities.
FIFA judge Hans-Joachim Eckert found Kika guilty of breaching five sections of the ethics code.
No precise details of the case were provided, with FIFA only saying that proceedings “were opened in November 2014 in relation to several international friendly matches played in South Africa in 2010.”
Kika was one of five officials named in a FIFA report on match-fixing.
FIFA’s ethics committee adjudicatory said it had banned Kika “from all football-related activities at national and international level for six years.”
It said the action followed an inquiry into “several international friendly matches played in South Africa in 2010.”
An earlier FIFA report told how Singapore-based convicted match fixer Wilson Perumal and his Football 4U organisation had linked up with officials in South Africa to fix matches before the country held the 2010 World Cup in 2010.
FIFA found the results of warm-up matches against Thailand, Bulgaria, Colombia and Guatemala were fixed.
Meanwhile, FIFA presidential candidate Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan has warned that delaying the February 26 elections would further harm the credibility of world soccer’s crisis-hit governing body.
Ali’s chances of winning the vote improved last week when rival candidate Michel Platini, the UEFA president, was suspended for 90 days by FIFA’s ethics committee along with current FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, pending a full investigation.
In the latest chapter of a corruption crisis, both have denied wrongdoing and announced they will appeal, prompting two sources to tell Reuters that FIFA was considering delaying the election. Another candidate, South Korea’s Chung Mong-joon, was banned for six years by the FIFA ethics committee last week, but Ali said the election date should not be changed. Chung has said he will appeal his ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), sport’s highest tribunal.
“With FIFA’s crisis deepening, the organisation needs to move beyond interim leadership and elect an accountable president,” Ali said in a statement on Wednesday. — AFP.
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