adminmove is likely to receive the backing of world football governing body Fifa. The world soccer governing appears to be advocating for similar moves across the globe as they battle to clean the football empire.
Three Zifa board members – Solomon Mugavazi (Northern Region), Kenny Marange (vice-president) and Methembe Ndlovu (board member development) – are currently under suspension to pave the way for investigations into their alleged roles in the Asiagate scam.
Zifa chief executive, Jonathan Mashingaidze, said referees implicated in the Central Region corruption scam would be dealt with by a judicial body set up for such purposes.
He said the cases of the senior administrators such as board members would be referred to the board.
Mashingaidze indicated that it was the board’s prerogative to suspend the senior administrators while carrying out the probe. Zifa have been called upon by the game’s stakeholders to take a similar stance and suspend the pair of Central Region chairman Patrick Hokonya and his Southern Region counterpart Gift Banda.
Hokonya and Banda were this week implicated in the referees’ scandal that has rocked the Central Region and derailed the crowning of that zone’s Division One League champions.
Although Banda has made a spirited denial of his involvement, the Zimbabwe Soccer Supporters Association led the way in calling for the pair’s suspensions to enable an uninterrupted probe by the Zifa Referees Committee, which is currently led by the association’s vice-president Ndumiso Gumede.
It has also emerged that Zifa have called for an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the way forward in dealing with the allegations raised against Hokonya and Banda.
There is growing pressure on the board to act on the pair. Fifa have, however, lent credence to Mashingaidze’s bid that the board members would have to be suspended while a probe that would either find them guilty or clear them was being concluded.
According to reports from Zurich, Switzerland, Fifa’s new anti-corruption expert has stated that world football’s governing body should consider suspending officials who are under criminal investigation as part of efforts to clean up the organisation.
Fifa on Wednesday unveiled Mark Pieth as leader of the Independent Governance Committee that will oversee reform of world football’s governing body including a limit on terms of the executives.
Pieth, who currently serves as Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Basel, said Fifa should seek to make the election of its presidents more transparent and impose term limits for officials in a bid to avoid strong loyalties which result in favours being swapped.
“We are talking about serious matters here and not everybody will like this,” Pieth said as he presented a preliminary report containing proposed reforms at Fifa headquarters in Zurich. Pieth will chair a group of experts with backgrounds in law, sports, marketing and governance.
The committee will be in charge of working on concrete proposals to improve Fifa’s governance and transparency, and will receive reports from four existing Fifa task forces concerning Revision of Statutes, the Ethics Committee, Transparency and Compliance, and Football 2014.
Pieth’s report stated that Fifa should seek to address the potential for conflict of interest in its relationship with member associations.
“Fifa is answerable to its 208 Member Associations who in turn are recipients of funding from Fifa and maybe financially dependent on these funds,” the report read.
“Additional preventive measures ensuring transparency and accountability in its relations with members should be taken in the area of financial contributions for the development of football in countries and regions.”
For the past 21 years, Pieth has led the advisory group on bribery in international business for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In 2004, he was chosen by the United Nations to serve on an independent inquiry team examining alleged corruption in the Iraqi oil-for-food programme.
He stated that the opening of an official investigation against Fifa committee members or employees could become a threshold for putting their involvement at Fifa on hold.
Fifa are under pressure to strengthen their anti-corruption rules following allegations of bribe-taking by senior officials, including executive committee members.
Online Reporter