adminThe Zurich-based organisation has been sitting on the case, waiting to be furnished with supporting documentary material from Zifa, since October last year when the first wave of sanctions were announced by the local football mother body.
Four letters have been sent from Fifa’s Zurich offices, from October to February this year, to Mashingaidze requesting for the submission of the documentary evidence to enable the world football governing body to either endorse or dismiss the sanctions.
Without an endorsement from Fifa, the sanctions imposed by Zifa have insignificant meaning as demonstrated by former Warriors’ skipper, Method Mwanjali, playing in two international club friendly matches for Mamelodi Sundowns, in this country in January, despite being banned for life by the association.
The powerful Fifa executive committee, which wound its meeting in Zurich yesterday, is expected to come up with a position on Asiagate after a presentation on the case was done, in the afternoon session of the indaba yesterday, by the organisation’s legal and disciplinary experts.
The Fifa legal and disciplinary experts had been hoping that they would have been furnished, with all the relevant documents in the Asiagate saga, long before the executive committee meeting.
However, this wasn’t done, after repeated requests from Fifa officials for the past four months, for additional information from Zifa, to enable the world football governing body to come up with a binding position, on everyone sanctioned, in their individual capacity.
While Zifa adopted a blanket approach, sanctioning people for just having been part of a tour, Fifa have been clear that every individual has to be dealt with differently and documentary evidence provided, in each case, to support the sanctions.
Last month Fifa secretary-general, Jerome Valcke, said they had requested and were still waiting for additional material from Zifa to enable them to take a position that was consistent with the statutes that guide their global operations.
Zifa chief executive, Mashingaidze, is running the risk of having neglected such a very important issue, to the extent of either derailing or compromising its resolution by Fifa, through a systematic failure of providing the information as and when it was requested by those in Zurich.
Crucially, Mashingaidze also runs the risk of being unmasked as someone who lied to Fifa, which is a serious betrayal of trust for someone who holds such a position of authority in a national football association, in the event that he fails to prove that he indeed, as he claims, submitted the documents as way back as October last year.
Shockingly, documents obtained by The Herald also show that Fifa officials, who have been handling the Asiagate saga, have repeatedly slammed into a brickwall, every time they have tried to even contact Mashingaidze by phone to get clarification on certain issues.
The first indications that Zifa were not playing ball, and had not responded to a number of requests from Fifa to help the Zurich organisation bring finality to the Asiagate saga, emerged at the weekend when local newspaper reports published the February 18 letter from Fifa experts giving the local mother body a final reminder to provide the material within 10 days.
Soon after the reports emerged in local newspapers, Mashingaidze, who was in Bulawayo on official business visiting the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair grounds where Zifa intend to run an exhibition this year, went to the association’s offices, in the City of Kings, and sent an e-mail to Fifa.
The email, generated from the Zifa Bulawayo province’s offices, was sent to Fifa director of legal affairs, Marco Villiger, paints a picture of a desperate Mashingaidze, having realised that time had caught up with him, trying to charm the Fifa officials.
The email is Mashingaidze’s first response, to the Fifa letter of February 18, which gave the local mother body a final reminder to comply with a request for additional material, within a 10-day period, for each and every individual sanctioned in the Asiagate saga.
That the response, to such a very key issue, came exactly 26 days after Fifa’s letter arrived at the Zifa offices and in Mashingaidze’s email portfolio, 18 days after the deadline that had been set for the material to be submitted, puts into sharp focus the frustrations that the men in Zurich have endured trying to bring this case to a close.
“Dear Mr Villiger, Please find hereto attached my letter in response to your request,” wrote Mashingaidze in his email, sent from Bulawayo Zifa offices on Saturday, March 16, in response to a final reminder that had come from Fifa on February 18.
“I had sent you communication in October 2012 with attachments and I wonder what happened to them. I have sent by DHL Four box files, which by now you must have received.
“Should you require more information Please contact me on my mobile number +263 772 948 150 . Can I please have your mobile number. Regards, Jonathan Mashingaidze, (Chief Executive, Zimbabwe Football Association).”
On Tuesday, March 19, Octavian Bivolaru, the Fifa Legal Counsel/Disciplinary and Governance Legal Affairs Division, responded to Mashingaidze’s email, and makes it clear that they have not received the documents he claims he submitted.
Crucially, he challenges Mashingaidze to prove that he indeed forwarded the documents.
“Dear Mr Mashingaidze, I refer to your correspondence below. In this regard, we would like to inform you that we were not in possession of the attached letter dated October 30, 2012, or any attachments related thereof,” wrote Bivolaru.
“We would appreciate if you could provide us with a fax or email receipt attesting the prior notification of the aforementioned correspondence.
“Furthermore, we have not received the four box files which you allege to have sent by DHL.
“In this respect, we would be grateful if you could inform us on the exact date you have sent them, as well as provide us with the DHL tracking number, so that we can track the package and check when it will be delivered to us.
“On a side note, I have tried to call you on the number you provided below, however this does not appear to be working. Therefore, we kindly ask you to provide us with a working telephone number for contact purposes.
“Thank you for taking note of the above and looking forward to your reply, Best regards — Octavian Bivolaru Legal
Counsel/Disciplinary and Governance Legal Affairs Division Fifa.”
On February 18, Villigier and Marco Cavaliero, head of disciplinary and governance at Fifa, sounded the alarm bells when they gave Mashingaidze an ultimatum to provide them with the requested documents.
“We have not received yet an answer from your association to the request sent by the secretariat of the Disciplinary Committee on October 29, 2012, ,in which we asked you to provide us, by return, with documentary evidence (such as copies of letters, fax reports, emails etc) for each individual case involving a player or official, related with the conditions established in Article 137 of the Fifa Disciplinary Code,” Villigier and Cavaliero wrote.
“Furthermore, we have not been provided with any information on when and how the persons sanctioned had been informed of the appeal procedure.
“In the light of this, we kindly ask you to provide us with the requested information and proof of the communication of the relevant documenantion by February 28, 2013, at the latest.”
Online Reporter