LAGOS: Amos Adamu, kicked off the FIFA executive committee in a votes-for-cash scandal, is now free to resume his football administrative career if he should wish writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

The Nigerian was banned from all activity in the game for three years after asking undercover reporters posing as bidders for $800,000 to influence his hosting vote in the World Cup hosting ballot for 2018 and 2022.

He had told them he wanted the money paid to him personally so he could finance the construction of new pitches in Nigeria. After the Sunday Times revelations – for which the newspaper was never thanked by FIFA – he was suspended and not allowed to take part in the December 2010 votes, was ultimately banned for three years by FIFA and failed in two appeals against his sanction.

When the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected his second appeal last year, the panel from sport’s supreme court observed the punishment to have ”even relatively mild given the seriousness of the offence.”

FIFA ethics prosecutor Michael Garcia is believed to be study reports that Adamu’s son, Samson, had tried in vain to negotiate a $1m sponsorship  by the Qatar’s World Cup bid committee to host a gala dinner in South Africa on the eve of the 2010 World Cup.

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