ZURICH: FIFA’s ethics committee has banned former Bahamas football official Lionel Haven for five years without being able to tell him directly writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

Haven, once a member of the executive committee of the Caribbean Football Union under the disgraced Jack Warner, had failed to disclose information on cash payments at a CFU event in 2011.

This was the notorious conference arranged by Trinidadian Warner for the Qatari, Mohamed bin Hammam, to seek CFU federations’ support for his attempt to oust Sepp Blatter as president of the world federation.

After the conference the federations’ delegates were handed $40,000 dollars in cash to “cover expenses.” Revelations of the cash offers led ultimately to the downfall of Bin Hammam and Warner, who were respectively presidents of the Asian and central/north American confederations.

A statement from the ethics committee said that the punishment on Haven was being published without him being personally notified because “the adjudicatory chamber was unable to reach Mr Haven at his last known postal address.”

Haven has also been fined SFr 3,000 – if the ethics committee can ever find him.

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