admin
Last week the Fifa executive committee ran out of patience, with Zifa, after repeated requests for the local association to furnish them with documents, in the case, fell on deaf ears. Mashingaidze might be accused of having deliberately misinformed Fifa two weeks ago when he sent an email to the world football governing body, after realising that he had missed the deadline by which to send documents, claiming he had sent four parcels via DHL last year.
He claimed he had sent the documents on October 30 last year.
Fifa officials challenged Mashingaidze to provide a track record of the supplied documents, which were needed by the world football football governing body’s legal and disciplinary committees to enable them to make a determination ahead of the executive committee meeting in Zurich last week.
However, Mashingaidze’s claims that he used DHL to send those four boxes of transcripts of the disciplinary hearings into Asiagate have been unmasked as not being true because those documents were only sent to Fifa last week, long after the Zifa chief executive had sent his email claiming he had forwarded the papers.
ASIAGATE
Octavian Bivolaru, Legal counsel, disciplinary and governance of the Fifa Legal Affairs Division, confirmed exclusively to The Herald that he received two boxes, sent from DHL Offices in Harare (corner Fourth Street and Central Avenue), last week.
“I am both disappointed that Jonathan (Mashingaidze) lied, all along, that he had sent us the documents on October 30, 2012, when, in fact, the two boxes that we received, on separate dates, were sent on Monday 18, March 2013, arriving three days later,” said Bivolaru.
“The second one was sent on Thursday 21 March 2013, and we picked it up four days later.
“In all our years of dealing with DHL and parcels, we never encountered problems and was wondering how parcels could be sent in October, get lost and no report is made by the sender to the courier, even after we confirmed we got nothing.
“Plainly, Zifa lied for having sent anything to us, because, when they actually did, we got them in stipulated time.”
Fifa have a running account with DHL and all of their 209 associations send thousands of documents daily and there have not been any unprecedented delays, loss or damage reported.
A senior manager at DHL headquarters in Harare also confirmed that they, indeed, handled the ZXifa consignments last week.
“Our courier service is so efficient that it takes at most four working days to send parcels to a destination like Switzerland and not any longer,” the manager, who didn’t want to be named, said.
“More importantly, our tracking system allows us to keep track of the goods until they are delivered, that is why I am able to tell you, yes, the parcels were delivered.
“More so, our system keeps history of transactions for three months, making it impossible not to be able to know what happened to our clients’ cargo.”
However, Mashingaidze, in correspondence to Fifa as late as February 25, 2013, three days before the deadline set on February 18 for the delivery of the documents lapsed, insisted he had sent them the documents via courier, even though he knew he had not done so.
In doing so, Mashingaidze kept the careers of a number of players and coaches in a frozen state, given they were waiting for Fifa’s determination on the matter, for them to know whether they would be barred or given a new lease of life.
He now stands accused of delaying justice, which is tantamount to denying justice, and Fifa have since acted by quashing all the sanctions imposed on individuals in the matter until further notice.
Last Monday, following media leaks of the Fifa correspondence, Mashingaidze sent two boxes, not four as originally stated in earlier communication, to the world football governing body via DHL.
The Herald can confirm that the first box had files weighing 14 kgs and the second one weighed a cool 21 kgs.
Both parcels were delivered within the swift time range of DHL, the same company that was said to have failed to deliver to the documents to the same destination for over six months.
The consignment arrived after the crucial 24-member Fifa executive committee indaba, held in Zurich on March 20-21, with the committee already having made its recommendations on the Asiagate case.
Crucially on February 25, Mashingaidze wrote to Fifa insisting that he had, indeed, sent them four boxes of documents numbered – A,B,C and D – adding that he had also sent the same to Ashford Mamelodi, the Fifa development officer in Botswana.
“Zifa has sent, ONCE MORE, documentary evidence in respect of the information you requested for. We have RESENT four boxes numbered — A, B, C and D — through international courier, DHL, and addressed to yourself,” Mashingaidze wrote in an email to Fifa.
“Another set was sent to the Fifa Development Officer, Ashford Mamelodi, in Botswana.
“Please be advised that appeals are set to be heard by no later than March 31, 2013, and we shall favour you with the outcomes, thereof.”
Last week Fifa pushed Mashingaidze into a tight corner by challenging him to prove that he submitted documentary evidence, requested by the world football governing body, to back the association’s decision to sanction scores of individuals in the Asiagate match-fixing saga.
Four letters were 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. 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.
Documents obtained by The Herald also show that Fifa officials, who have been handling the Asiagate saga, 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 was 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.
Online Reporter